Our Power Together
by Cyberwraith9
Summary: Team Possible answers the call for one final mission. Allies become enemies, and enemies become unstoppable, as a new challenge arises to put everything our heroes believe in to the test. Will the team survive? Part Four of the Power Trilogy!
1. There's a Fourth Part?

_Author's Foreword_

I'll keep this brief for your sanity and mine.

This project has been bouncing around in my head for the last year and a half. I couldn't help it. I swore I was done, that I had ended the story in a good place, and that it didn't need anything more. Of all the stories I've started, The Power Trilogy was the one I actually finished and did credit to (at least, in my opinion).

Then: Season Four.

And damned if Mark and Bob aren't doing a hell of a job with the new status quo in Kim Possible. I love it. I love the new dynamic between the characters, which hasn't overshadowed what I loved about them before the change. It's great.

So: this story.

I hope you enjoy Our Power Together. It'll be my final foray into Kim Possible fan fiction. For anyone who hasn't read the previous stories in the Power Trilogy, I highly recommend that you go back in my archives and take a look. There's a lot of confusion to be had if you aren't familiar with the zany alternate reality I've crafted. For those of you who are familiar with the Trilogy, I hope I do you proud, just like I hope I do right by Kim and Ron.

Now let's get this show on the road.

_Chronological Note_

This storyline began back before Season Three started, and thus differs ever so slightly from canon KP. Generally, the events of S3 happened in this story (with the exception of Kim and Yori's first meeting). So the Drama happened as well, but without the revolutionary hookup at the end; Kim and Ron have, as of Our Power Together, only recently become involved. No events from Season Four are included in this continuity (with one partial exception, whom you'll meet again in Chapter 2).

For a complete understanding of the continuity changes, reference the previous three arcs in the story, beginning with The Power of Love. Otherwise, you can pick it up as you go along.

* * *

_All-Purpose Disclaimer_

Kim Possible is a registered trademark of Disney, Inc., and was created by Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley. All rights and properties are retained therein. Use of the aforementioned is without permission for this fan-made fiction without profit in accordance with the Fair Use Act doctrine of United States Copyright law.

* * *

_Three Weeks Ago_

The world terrified him, and so he clung to sleep with frightened ferocity. Even safe in his womb, surrounded by a viscous sea of orange, he curled tighter into a fetal ball every time the dark shapes returned to the world's edge. Life was always like this: the orange, the dark shapes, and the feeder and breather snaking down from the top of his world. On occasion, the shapes would pound against the edge of the world from the other side, sending tiny bubbles to chase each other up the edge's glassy surface. He would watch his warped reflection tremble behind the bubble curtain. Then he would squeeze his eyes shut and hope for sleep to steal him away. There, in his dreams, he saw the_ others_.

_"No big," rose petal lips assured him, curving into a smile that made his heart skip two beats. "What are best friends for?" she asked, twirling, her fiery hair shimmering around her cherubic face. He knew without a doubt that he would die to protect her. He loved her more than anything._

_"Bon-diggity," a grin as old as the hills said, answering some forgotten question. Freckles danced beneath chestnut eyes as he swept a hand through unruly waves of straw atop his head. "So we're on the job, right?" He knew without a doubt that anything was possible with him by his side. He loved him more than anything._

The dreams came often, even when he was awake. He retreated into those fanciful flights with gusto, watching those _others_. Their adventures delighted him. Their language confounded him. But the connection they shared baffled him utterly. He could almost touch it, as though it were physical, tangible. But it was not in him, and its absence frightened him more than any dark shape ever could.

_The others sat atop a rusting bunk in a dungeon of steel. She turned her back to him, wearing a puffed expression of exasperation to hide her fear and anger. He slid in behind her, wrapping his arms around her in defiance of her pointed obliviousness. As he did, she buried her face in his arm to hide a smile she could not repress. "You know I just act that way because I'm crazy about you," he insisted to her in a soft, mirthful voice._

_Her resolve crumbled. She turned back, inadvertently pressing into him. Her arm wrapped around his waist, and his, hers. "And it never occurred to you," she murmured with half-lidded eyes, "That the crazy goes both ways?"_

Life continued like that for as long as he could remember. Longer. And it ended abruptly at the design of those dark shapes.

The edge of the world lifted, disappearing high above him. His feeder and breather pulled out of his face, leaving him to drown in the viscous orange as it spilled out onto a metal grate before he did. Naked, dripping, he collapsed onto the grate in a fit of seizures. Sensations assaulted him from all sides, forcing him back into his fetal curl. Whimpering gargled in his throat as he choked up the last of his womb.

"Vital signs are spiking, but stable enough," a brusque voice said some distance away. It dripped with an accent that struck his newborn ears as odd, though he couldn't place its origin. "The subject is awakening into post-gestation activity quite nicely. Better than we ever could have hoped."

He tried opening his eyes. A dark blur waited on the other side of his eyelids, interrupted by a forest green smear that bent low over him. A sultry voice erupted from the smear, which clarified enough to develop a set of piercing green eyes. "He looks like somebody just puked him up," the voice said as the eyes probed him critically.

Something about the two voices struck him as familiar. Impossible, because the _others'_ voices were the only voices he'd ever heard. "I assure you," the first, masculine voice snapped from somewhere in the surrounding pitch, "This young man is the product of the most advanced, radical technology—"

"Yeah, yeah, sure," the feminine green smear answered back. Her eyes never left him as she knelt down. She solidified further as his eyes adjusted to the new world, detail by detail: waves of charcoal cascaded around her shoulders, framing a pale expression centered with deep, black lips. "This is so weird," she said, letting her gaze wander over his nakedness. "He looks just like..."

The familiar feeling buzzing in his head intensified as her face came into focus. Her sallow green smile didn't resemble either _other_ in the slightest. So why did it seem so familiar? "Looks can be deceiving, Lady Shego," the first voice said. A figure dressed in red and black stepped out of the shadows, following his voice. He stood by the woman's side, peering down through a cowl-like helmet. He was barely half the woman's height, yet his posture commanded respect enough for two men.

"She...Go?" He repeated the name, rolling it around with his unfamiliar voice. Both of his spectators started at this, pulling back. He felt bad; he didn't want to scare the only people he knew. "Shego," he said again. Had he spoken it properly?

The green woman stood. "Did he say my...Does he know who I am?" she demanded. Criticism fled from her eyes, replaced by surprise. "How is that possible?"

The slight man shook his head. "It is not," he assured the woman, oblivious to the familiar feeling that plagued the newborn. "He is simply repeating your name because he heard me speak it. The gestational hypnotic/synaptic download did not include memories." To prove this, he knelt down in place of the woman, and used his thumb to roughly wipe the layer of orange from the newborn's eyes. "Do you know who I am, boy?"

Familiar feeling or no, he couldn't recognize this helmeted figure. "No," he admitted.

"Do you know who you are?" the short man pressed.

Images of the _others_ flashed before his eyes. Were they memories? Dreams? Visions? "No," he said again.

A wide smile spread beneath the rim of the helmet. "You are my son," he said, offering the newborn a hand. "And I am your father."

He took the hand, rising on unsteady legs to tower over the stocky man's helmet. His father. Glancing at the cynical woman at their side, the newborn asked, "Is she my mother?"

The woman snorted, pulling her eyes back above his waist. "Hell no," she grunted.

"She is your partner," the man in the helmet explained. "Together, you will overcome the impossible, and do the unthinkable."

"Why?" he asked.

The man's smile grew wider still. "Because you are a man capable of great good," he said in his thick accent. "You have the ability to do what no one before you ever could."

"What?"

"Save the world," the man said with a smile.

* * *

**Kim Possible  
Our Power Together**

_by Cyberwraith9_

* * *

**Act I: In which we catch up with old faces in preparation for new troubles.**

* * *

_Today_

"Students of Middleton High," a shaky voice said over the loudspeaker system, "You are about to take your first step on an incredible journey."

The auditorium ceased its collective shuffling at once, turning all attention to the podium seated atop the stage, and the officiously-dressed redhead standing behind it. Chatter silenced in the space of a single word, leaving it quiet enough to hear her pressed suit skirt crinkle through the microphone. She paused for effect, feeling her confidence grow.

"Some of you recognize me," she said, and paused again for a chuckle to work its way through the crowd. A hulking figure snorted from the side of the stage, glaring at her in her peripheral vision. "After Mister Barkin's 'interesting' introduction, there's really no need for this. But I happen to like the sound of my own name, so...I'm Kim Possible."

Another chuckle traveled through the audience, loudest in the blue-robed teens seated in the front rows. It gave Kim a chance to lock down her knocking knees. She could practically hear Barkin's brow creaking down over his eyes, but it didn't bother her. His glare was drowned out by the enormous smile beaming from the chair at Barkin's side. 'He's only smiling because his joke went over well,' Kim thought. She knew full well that Ron was actually being as supportive as he could. It was all she could do not to look over and return his thumbs-up.

"Now, you're probably wondering why I'm hitting you with platitudes and clichés. I'll admit, it doesn't pack the punch of 'I have a dream,' or 'Friends, Romans, countrymen...' I'm not much of a public speaker. Truthfully, I'm more at home dodging full-auto plasma gunfire while surfing down the Amazon on a broken door than I am in front of this terrifying bunch."

_"Show a little of that ol' Possible modesty,"_ Ron had told her while she wrote her speech. _"Let them know there are still one or two things that terrify the great Kim Possible."_ She recalled being annoyed by Ron's interruptive suggestions. Now, she felt her toes curl as she imagined the thank-you she would give him.

Kim brought her mind back to her anxious task, and locked the rogue thoughts down. "But when I was asked to be a guest speaker at this year's graduation ceremonies, I wracked my brain trying to come up with something meaningful. In the end, all I could think to say was the truth. And the truth sounds corny and hackneyed because, well, it's true, and it's worth repeating."

A couple of the graduating students in the front row leaned closer to one another, exchanging graveyard whispers under cover of Kim's speech. It must have been a joke at her expense, because a silent giggle capped their conversation. One year out of high school, Kim refused to believe that she and Ron had ever been that young.

"There's a world of adventure out there," Kim said, gripping the sides of the podium. "And I'm not talking about firefights with megalomaniacs or earthquake rescues, though you should certainly pursue those things if you're interested. I can use all the help I can get." With a soft smile, Kim brushed a lock of hair from her face. "I'm talking about the day-to-day grind. The 'boring' stuff. Sometimes the everyday things are more exciting than any adventure I've ever had. And it starts today for all of you."

The young couple in the front row didn't hear a word; they leaned closer, locking eyes as they whispered to one another. Kim found herself more interested in what they had to say, and had to force herself to concentrate on her speech.

"Life," she said, "Is an adventure. A journey. And you don't get any second chances. Time can either be cherished or lost. The choice is yours. No," she amended, pausing again. "'Choice' isn't the right word. 'Choices.' A million of them, waiting for you when you step off this stage with a little roll of paper that will try to tell you that you're ready for the 'real' world."

Kim had to stifle a laugh at the notion. "You aren't ready," she told the children seated before her. Even her young couple in the front row now stopped to listen. "You won't ever be ready," she said, "because life isn't something you prepare for. It happens whether you want it to or not. So prepare to be unprepared."

Listening to herself, Kim wondered if she'd always sounded so old and pretentious. She hoped not. _Give me a villain to quip at,_ she thought dryly, _Quick!_

"I wanted to come here and give you all that one piece of magical wisdom that would make your first steps into life smooth and easy. Maybe once I find it," she said, rubbing the back of her neck, "I'll let you know. Maybe." One final chuckle answered from the audience, fanning her smile into something worthy of a finale. "But until then, let me tell you this: live. Live for today, look to tomorrow, and always be mindful of yesterday. And always believe that anything is possible."

The audience burst into applause before she could finish thanking them for their time. One by one, then in pairs, and then by rows and sections, they rose up in standing ovation, giving her a brilliant blush as she stepped down from the podium. Kim caught sight of Steve Barkin's perpetually irritated expression as she passed him on his way to take her place onstage. She shot him a furtive look of amusement, reveling in the way his scowl deepened.

"Thank you, Miss Possible, for that incomprehensible speech," Barkin said at the podium, ignoring the screech of feedback that cowed his audience back into their seats. "We will now begin the needlessly long and convoluted ceremony of passing out fake diplomas to sate your parental need to see your son and/or daughter parade around. Real diplomas will follow in the mail once our soul-crushing bureaucracy—"

Kim reached the end of the stage and descended the steps to take Ron's outstretched hand. His face offered silent congratulations as he squeezed her hand. Looking over Kim's shoulder, Ron drew her gaze back to Barkin, who had already begun to drone names off in his sleep-inducing monotone. According to the program, they were supposed to take their seats and watch the rest of the senior class cross the stage. Ron's waggling eyebrows communicated an alternative, to which she eagerly nodded her agreement. Hand in hand, they snuck out the auditorium's side door, escaping Barkin's speech in the hallways beyond.

"Bon-diggity speech," said Ron, grasping her other hand to swing her full circle. Laughter rang between them until Kim broke away, spinning on her own and coming to rest next to a bulletin board mounted on the hall's faux-brickwork. Ron followed in a theatrical leap that brought him to the other side of the board. "Middleton High's most famous alumnus returns to make good."

Kim laughed. "Famous alumnus," she sneered playfully, punching him in the arm. Her elbow throbbed with the effort, reminding her that she needed to return it to her sling before a month's worth of incarceration in a cast became moot. She rubbed her arm and grimaced, momentarily losing her humor. "I'm mission-grounded, living in my parents' house again, and very much stuck on the injured list. Oh, the glamorous life of Kim Possible. They ought to make a show about it."

Ron's laugh echoed down the empty halls after hers. "That'd be a hoot to watch," he said. Tugging on the lapels of his suit jacket, he said in his worst Scottish accent, "Maybe they could find someone Connery-esque to play the dashing Ron Stoppable."

"Yeah." Kim wasn't listening. Her eyes had taken to roaming the hall, and worked their way to the bulletin board at their backs. Flyers collaged the corkboard out of sight with notices about summer clubs and school policies. "It all feels smaller, doesn't it?" she asked, and backed away from the board. "I don't remember everything being so small."

A quick shuffle brought Ron back to Kim's side. He took hold of her shoulders and examined the bulletin board. "Oh, I don't know," he said, squinting dramatically. "Personally, I don't think anything could diminish the significance of Chess Club summer tryouts."

"I'm serious," she said, laughing anyway while she slapped his chest. The blow hurt her elbow more than anything else. "I just told a room full of people that all of this was basically kid stuff. Most of them weren't that much younger than us."

Something caught Kim's eye from the edge of her memory. She looked over, spotting a pair of clueless children ghosting past their lockers. The first sprinted down the hall with book slung underarm, ducking and weaving through an invisible crowd. Her long red hair waved behind her like a banner, and the hem of her tasteless green tank top fluttered around a taut midriff. Behind her, a doughy, gangly blond traipsed after her, tripping over his own feet. His silent shout for help made the sprinting girl turn back, and returned the smile to Kim's face.

"Was I wrong?" asked Kim. She leaned into Ron's grasp, allowing his arms to slide around her waist while she watched the ghostly pair fade back into the past.

Ron wondered briefly what Kim was looking at. "We had some good years here, KP," he said. "I wouldn't trade any of 'em for a grande-sided platter. But you gotta admit," he added, looking back at the bulletin board, "a lot's happened to us in the last year."

Memory flared back into Kim's eyes: LoVE; Yamanouchi; the Observatory. A year's worth of battle, loss, and victory hammered into Kim, instilling new truth in her speech and Ron's affirmations. Their high school days had been fun and exciting, but nothing like the last year they'd just survived. "I guess we have changed," she admitted. "Does that make us old?"

"Older than dirt," Ron agreed, earning him another slap to the chest. "What? How can nineteen-year-old geriatrics like us appreciate the hip, young intricacies of..." He leaned forward, squinting again as Kim giggled at his antics. "...a Swim Team bake sale, or a mini-reunion for our graduating class, or—"

"Wait. What?" Kim broke from Ron's arms and rushed forward, slamming into the board with her palms. The pain in her arm flared unbearably, but she didn't feel it. She tore the innocent flyer from its staples and buried her nose in its wrinkled print. "Middleton High School invited its distinguished alumni back into its halls for the one-year anniversary of their graduation," she read aloud. "Return to your alma mater and reconnect with the people who made your youthful days special."

Peering over Kim's shoulder, Ron scratched his head and read the flyer's headline. "A 'Where Are They Now' dance? This is so unfair," he moaned. "I never even got around to dreading our five-year reunion, and now we've got a reunion coming up in...when is it?"

The rumpled flyer fell away from Kim's face, revealing a horrorstruck expression. "One week," she said.

"Oh, well that sounds reasonabuh—what?" Ron snatched the flyer from Kim's grasp and pressed it into his face. "How is this possible?"

His shrill commotion awoke a small, bewhiskered blob in his pressed pants' pocket. The curious rodent poked his head out, looking up at the piece of paper flapping in his mobile home's hands. "Huh?" Rufus muttered, stretching himself from Ron's hip to his elbow and scampering to the flyer. Plucking it free, Rufus examined it for himself. "Ho, foxtrot!" he squeaked, wagging his tail.

"Traitor," Kim muttered at the mole rat as he began to fold and crease the flyer. Her gaze drifted up toward Ron's, which held the same spark of dread that hers had. "How could this happen?" she asked. "What kind of idiot would organize a reunion one year out of high school?"

"That would be me."

The intrepid team turned in unison to the stunning brunette posed behind them. A stack of the flyers sat cradled in her arm, leaned up between her low-rider jeans and her provocative crop top. Tempest sparked her ocean eyes when they met Kim's smoldering emeralds.

"There's no surprise," said Kim.

Bonnie Rockwaller sniffed as only she could, and lifted her nose into the air. "It just so happens that I'm our graduating class's Reunion Officer. I organized this 'Where Are They Now' dance all by myself."

"You must be busting with pride," Kim muttered, affixing a plastic grin to her lips.

Ron managed a much better impression of delight than Kim. "Look, Kim," he exclaimed, stepping around to Bonnie's side. "It's Bonnie! You remember Bonnie, right?" Looking to Bonnie, he said, "We went to school here together. I'm Ron Stoppable." He took Bonnie's hand, much to her distaste, and pumped it up and down. "You may not remember, but you used to have the biggest crush on me. And you'd express it in the cutest ways. Like how you called me 'Loser' all the time, or when you told the cheer squad that I was impotent. You even photoshopped my face onto a horse's ass and posted it all over school," he said, laughing and slapping his knee.

"Kim," Bonnie said, glancing down at the unwanted handshake, "could you please tell your pet loser to let go of me?"

Her hand slid from Ron's with a sweaty squeak. Ron laughed, and said, "Ah, good times."

"The official invites went out lat month," said Bonnie, wiping her hand on her jeans. Freed from Ron, her snide expression found new life. "Didn't you get yours?" she asked sweetly.

"Must have gotten lost in the mail," Kim said through her smile.

A flip of the hair dismissed Kim's green flames. "Pity. But at least you know about it now. It'll give you plenty of time to make sure we don't have a repeat of Senior Prom."

Ron heard the telltale crack of Kim's knuckles. "Okay," he said, stepping between the ladies so quickly that he almost knocked Rufus off his shoulder perch. Keeping his back in the way of Kim's potential onslaught, he ushered Bonnie away, once more curling Bonnie's lip with unwelcome touch. "You know what, it has just been such a treat seeing you again, simply delightful, such a shame you have to go, no, we understand, you're a busy lady, off you go, keep in touch, eat your greens, all that jazz."

"Eight o'clock in the gym, K," Bonnie called back as she sauntered free from Ron's hands. "Bring a book so you won't be bored."

Both teens locked their eyes on their departing rival; Kim glared back at the lingering laughter in Bonnie's last glance, while Ron's gaze fell to the swaying curve of Bonnie's hips. Bile clawed at the bottom of Kim's throat. "There is no justice in this or any other world," she uttered just loud enough for Ron to hear, "that incorporates that disgusting social peacock as anything even remotely successful."

"At least some things never change," Ron quipped.

"It just so happens," Kim sang, mimicking Bonnie's voice in mangled soprano, "that I'm our class's Reunion Officer." She waved and tilted her hips, strutting like Bonnie did. Then she collapsed into herself and stuck her finger down her throat. "What the hell is a 'Reunion Officer' anyway? And also: blech!"

The wrinkle of her brow struck Ron. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," he said, folding his arms.

Kim's eyebrows shot up. "You know Shakespeare?" she asked, shocked.

"That's from Shakespeare?" Now Ron's eyebrows ascended. "I heard it on Must-See Thursdays." Kim's annoyed look couldn't deter him. "C'mon, KP. What's got you so tweaked? We haven't seen Bonnie in almost a year. You should have, like, massive stores of Bonnie-tolerance stockpiled."

"I know, I know," she said, sighing. Turning, Kim closed her eyes, this time fighting the flood of memories that came. "You know me and dances."

Strong arms encircled her from behind, drawing her back to the folds of Ron's suit jacket. "Don't tell me that the human dynamo Kim Poss—"

Kim burst from his embrace. "Knock that off, Ron," she snapped. "It isn't funny."

The soft, melodious mumbling of a naked mole rat drew all eyes to Ron's shoulder. There, Rufus held the stolen flyer, which he'd folded into a pair of dancers joined at the hip. The origami couple wriggled in his grasp to the tune of his humming. "Dip!" he squeaked, and turned the paper pair on its side.

"Seriously, we could trade you in for a hamster so fast it'd make your whiskers twirl," Kim barked at him. Rufus dropped the origami and retreated across Ron's shoulders, cowering behind a messy mop of hair.

Ron scooped Rufus up and cradled him protectively. "Whoa. Okay, easy on the naked mole rat," said Ron, tossing Kim a surprised look.

Kim deflated, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "I'm sorry, Rufus," she said. The mole rat quivered as she extended her hand to him, but when she left it hanging there, he sniffed at it. Rufus crawled onto her hand, and then squeaked with contentment as Kim brought him to her chest and stroked him apologetically. "And I'm sorry to you, too," she told Ron.

"Glad to know I at least rank second," joked Ron. Kim just continued to stare down at Rufus as she petted him. "Seriously, KP," he said in a soft tone, "You shouldn't stress it so bad. There's one big difference between this and Senior Prom."

"And that would be what?" Kim asked. Her elbow flared up again. In a miserable tone, she said, "I'm mission-grounded, living with my parents, and very much stuck on the injured list."

Those strong hands snared her waist again. This time Kim didn't fight them. She let her head fall back onto his shoulder as he whispered in her ear, "This time you'll be showing up with the pick of the litter on your arm."

Kim surrendered to his advances, and released Rufus onto her shoulder so she could reach up and caress Ron's cheek. "Well," she said, feigning thoughtfulness, "I guess it has been a while since we've been out together."

Ron's mind sped over their month of relationship, separating their standard, platonic activities from those that fit into traditional concepts of romance. "KP," he said, offering her a confused look as her head swiveled toward his, "we've never 'been out' before."

"All the more reason, then," she quipped back, and then silenced his lips in a slow and affectionate way.

* * *

Ethereal winds swept through her sandalwood-scented locks, whispering secrets to her from the four corners of the mortal plane. She sat in the center of the tempest with her legs curled beneath her, keeping her eyes closed so that she could see better. Senses most people never knew of spoke to her about everything and nothing all at once. The flood of otherworldly information acted as white noise, allowing her to seek answers to unspoken questions within herself. 

_Breathe in the chaos,_ she chanted within herself. _Exhale in peace._ _Accept uncertainty. Never succumb to it._

She sat anchored to a sense of tranquility as her master's lessons ghosted across her lips. After only seven months of intense study, the lessons had become her own to someday teach to other impressionable young girls. It would be decades before she completed her training, but in that short span, she could already feel her abilities growing into those of a true champion.

But those months of training could not prepare her for the wave of discord that hammered into her.

Peace fled in panic from her body, stranding her alone in the middle of a sudden gale. The universe's whispers rose up in disharmony and deafened her with a thunderous roar. Reality wept. She did not know why, and could only weep with it. Magic shivered, chilling her to the core of her very soul.

She reeled back and clapped her hands over her ears, falling back into the physical, back onto the mat of woven reeds beneath her. A scream scraped her throat raw as she cried with the universe. She rolled over, squeezing her eyes shut in tears.

"Sempai!" A worried cry came from the hall before her door slid open, admitting a flock of junior students. They descended upon her in a flurry of white canvas uniforms, their bare feet padding around her on the wood floor.

A young girl rolled her over, shooing her classmates back as she knelt by her side. "Sempai," she said, trying to pry the hands from the elder student's ears, "Sempai, please! What is wrong?"

Yori Akamatsu opened her eyes, drawing a deep, sharp breath. Her hands came free of her head and fell into the laps of her crowding students. Tears tumbled clear of her lolling eyes, which finally found purchase on the faces above her. "Did you not feel it?" she rasped.

The young girls exchanged confused expressions. "Feel what, Sempai?" one asked.

"Was it an earthquake?" another added.

Yori sat up with their assistance. The light supper in her stomach fought for release. "Like no other," she said.

Cold sweat poured from her body as she tried approaching the astral catastrophe objectively. Shell-shocked, she extended her senses back into the ether with caution. The storm raged on, but distantly. This time she had prepared herself for it. This time, she was aware enough to recognize the familiar feeling at the storm's focus.

New tears sprang into Yori's eyes, upsetting her students anew. She sat on the floor and wept without heed of the worried jabbering in her ear. "Oh," she moaned softly, burying her face in her knees, "This cannot be."

"Sempai, what is it?"

Yori looked up at them. The anguish on her face drove her students back in fright. "Something awful will rend the balance," she whispered. "And I fear our Chosen One is to be responsible."

**To Be Continued**

A big tip of the hat to Isamu for beta reading this story. Go check out his contribution to the KP arts, entitled Born To Shadowrun. Then come right back and read this story again. After that, you're free to do as you like.


	2. An Overabundance of Plot

"_Flight Two-Zero-Eight from JFK International, your baggage is now available at Carousel Three."_

Yori scratched at the collar of her jacket, longing for the comfort of her stealthy, skintight uniform, or the familiar feel of her schoolgirl guise. Still, judging by the unmistakable male interest she drew as she glided through Middleton Airport's baggage claim, she found it hard to argue with the silk blouse and black miniskirt that Naru had chosen as her civilian apparel.

Lumpy duffels and suitcases paraded around the conveyer belt of the claim as she waited patiently for the rubber curtain to vomit up her checked luggage. Her thoughts were far from the spinning bags, already across town with a freckled visage that filled her with conflict. Just the thought of him weakened her knees, and elicited from her the memory of watching him light the First Temple of her homelands as a corona of golden brilliance.

Sensei's instructions burned in her ears still. Were it any other target, she would not doubt her ability to complete her mission. Even Yamanouchi's governors, who disapproved of her greatly, had given her the full support of the school, including an open line of credit to use as she deemed necessary. Such a consensus from the mysterious leaders of Yamanouchi happened rarely, and should be considered a peerless honor.

Her large and ornate bag passed before her on the carousel. As she pulled the bag from the belt, a clumsy hand tapped her on the shoulder. She set the bag down and turned to find a fat, oafish, officious-looking security guard looming behind her. From the way his eyes shot up to her face, she guessed correctly that he had been staring at her legs.

"Excuse me, miss. Do-you-speakee-English?" he asked slowly.

Fluent in three different languages, Yori offered him a vapid smile and nodded eagerly. "Yees," she squeaked. "I speakee littel." She could already guess where his inquiry would head, and decided to keep the upper hand on the conversation with a little harmless role-playing.

Smiling back, the guard pointed down at her bag and the long, black sheathe wrapped in cloth and secured with rope to its side. "I'm a little concerned about that big honkin' knife you've got there. May I see your passport?"

Yori could smell the bag search that was sure to come, which would unearth a plethora of ninja accessories she didn't have time to explain away. She decided to turn her efforts up a notch. "Yees," she said again, and drew her passport out of her handbag with a giggle. After handing him the passport, she bent down slowly, letting him 'sneak' another good, long look at her smooth and perfect thighs. She unfastened the ornate sheath and held it up for him to see. Her hand slid deliberately over the weapon as her eyes grew half-lidded. "Ees geeft foh frend," she said, and giggled suggestively.

"A gift, hmm?" The guard barely glanced at her passport, more interested in the unbuttoned apex of her blouse. "Well, Miss…Akamatsu," he said, "We're not accustomed to people carrying swords around here in America."

Why would they, when any fool who couldn't be bothered to master the perfect arts could simply go down to a corner store, purchase a gun, and become an instant barbarian?

"Sord geeft," she said again, and widened her smile until it hurt.

The oafish guard looked her up and down again as he returned her passport. "Well," he said, sticking his thumbs in his belt, "Just be sure to give it to him right quick so you don't get in trouble."

Yori's smile hid her despair. Shouldering her sword, she said to the guard, "No trubble. I geef gud."

She walked away, dropping her expression into the depths of her guilt. A murmured prayer pleaded her ancestors for the strength and certainty to do what she had to.

* * *

Elizabeth had expected this day for years.

She sat in her office, shuffling through reports that she had no desire to read. Status reports on this new Middleton project held nothing pertinent; her departments would come in late and over budget for the second quarter in a row. It had been hard enough to convince her superiors of the project's importance with her guarantees of being on time and on budget. It would only be a matter of time before one of those old buzzards tried to shut her down. She knew that reports from her other facilities worldwide would have no surprises either. Her subordinates could handle the status quo her other bases suffered from.

Elizabeth hated paperwork. It was her greatest nemesis, which meant a lot when your job revolved around protecting the free world from its greatest and most garish threats. Paperwork kept her behind a desk while the world's evil ran amok. Paperwork made her long for the days before her promotions, before she had shattered the glass ceiling of a global old-boys club to become its alpha. Paperwork stole from her the thrill of chasing down villains with nothing but a half charged plasma pistol and three-to-one odds against her. And paperwork, worst of all, played favorites; she lived with the awful certainty that men like Duff Killigan and Señor Senior Senior did not have to fill out three reams of forms whenever they shot someone.

But she would gladly have buried herself in paperwork to avoid the dull, frosty voice at her door that said, "Hello, Ma'am."

A lone eye lifted from the mountainous manila folders on her desk. "Hello, Cameron," said Elizabeth. Her stomach dropped two stories at the sight of the strapping man filling her doorway. His dark brown hair nearly brushed the top of the door frame as he stepped through. She eyed the taut muscles stretching his black jumpsuit and said, "You're looking well. When did you get back? You weren't due for another three weeks."

"Only last night," he replied, circumnavigating the small office. The forced courtesy in his voice strained both of their patience. It was an old dance of theirs, one that both had mastered and neither liked. A thick line of dust collected on his fingertip as he ran it across her bookshelf. "I decided to cut my sabbatical short. I needed to get back to work."

A glimmer of the affection she had once held for this man sparked in Elizabeth as she heard the pain lurking beneath those words. It took a concentrated effort on her part to remind herself that Cameron was a man suffering a great loss. For that, if nothing else, she forced her voice to resemble something warm and caring. It wasn't easy for someone who lived as she did. "There's no rush," she told him.

He pretended to examine the dust on his fingertip. "I'm not here to discuss my situation, ma'am. I have no situation, save those my department gives to me, which I then give to you. Or rather," he added with a touch of smugness, "which I usually give to you."

Elizabeth's eyebrow quirked as her guest pulled a book from its shelf and flipped idly through its pages. Her patience and kindness, shallow pools to begin with, had run dry. "This clearly isn't a social call, Commander Du. So why don't you put the poetry down and tell me why GJ's Director of Intelligence is dropping by unannounced."

Cameron Du ignored her clipped tone, running a hand across his borrowed book as though deep in thought. "He took his vorporal sword in hand," he read aloud, "Long time the Manxome foe he sought. So rested he by the tumtum tree, and stood a while in thought." Snapping the tome closed, he looked up at Elizabeth and asked, "Why do you suppose he wasn't afraid of the Jabberwock? Everyone else was."

"You'd have to ask Lewis Carroll," said Elizabeth. She stood and gestured to the chair opposite her desk. "Now sit down and tell me what this is about before I shoot you."

He chuckled stiffly. "Always direct," he said, sitting as she had requested. When she did the same, he reached into his uniform front and produced a small manila folder. "I'm here because your little pet project just went rogue, and the Joint Chiefs want me to clean it up."

A short breath froze in her lungs as Elizabeth pulled the new folder from the top of her mountain. She opened the folder, careful to keep her gaze on Cameron. True to his training, the agent revealed nothing. "I wasn't aware that I had a pet project," she said coolly, and let her eye drop to the folder's contents.

Grainy photographs flashed past her gaze as she flipped through the folder's pages of damning evidence. They were security photos taken from a GJ facility surveillance camera. It didn't take her long to recognize the facility as one of the special warehouses used to contain "special" material. After all, she had set them up herself. But the facility itself wasn't of interest in the photos. Rather, the gaping hole blasted into its armored wall caught her attention first. As she flipped through the photos, she created her own clunky animation of a daring heist: large, burly helmeted men poured into the warehouse, subduing the GJ guards therein with embarrassing ease, and then securing a plethora of boxes. Central among those burly thieves were two figures, smaller than the rest, standing in the jagged hole and directing them with crisp gestures.

Never one to tip her hand, Elizabeth kept her tone skeptical and cool. "You came all this way to show me blurry pictures? I could go to a supermarket checkout for those."

"Jokes?" Cameron smirked and steepled his fingers. "I've never heard you utter a joke in your life. I can't say I like it. Besides, jokes won't save that after-school club you've been relying so heavily on."

The frigid breath lodged in Elizabeth's chest released slowly. Cameron didn't know everything, or so she suspected. Not the whole truth. Out loud, she asked, "If you're referring to Team Possible...?"

He nodded. "What you have there are last night's surveillance images from one of your new 'Evidence Lockers,' this one in Boise." Leaning forward, he added, "Boise was responsible for housing the centerpiece of that Lipsky debacle six weeks ago."

"I'm too old for doublespeak, Cam. Lipsky called it an Entropy Cannon."

Cameron's voice grew smugger with every page Elizabeth flipped. "According to our intelligence, it was actually one of Demens' inventions."

"Mm-hmm."

Cameron lifted a brow, teetering on the edge of his seat. He craned his neck so that Elizabeth could see his expression over her backlogged paperwork. "Demens escaped from prison almost a month ago," he reminded her.

"I'm well aware of that," she said in a bristling tone. "But unless he grew three feet in prison, this isn't Demens in the picture. Now," she said, rising in volume and in stature, "Since you handed me this file, I assume you knew this. Stop wasting my time and get to the point."

The blustery bluff failed to crack Cameron's façade. "Turn to the end," he told her. "I saved the best one for last."

Elizabeth flipped to the last page in the folder, and lost her breath all over again. The security camera that captured Cameron's concerns had zoomed in for a close shot of one of the directing thieves' face. His hard scowl thrust unwelcome familiarity deep into Elizabeth's roiling stomach.

Cameron misread the horror on her face, and leaned over her desk to smile arrogantly. "I take it you recognize him," he said.

More so than Cameron did, she was certain of that. "You had better be able to explain that smile, Mister. This is no laughing matter."

The smirk on his face flipped. "No," he said, settling back into his chair. "And neither is Global Justice's reliance on a couple of children and their rodent sidekick to do our dirty work. The Joint Chiefs of Staff weren't happy to begin with," he warned her.

"The Joint Chiefs of Staff know where they can stick it if they don't have the gumption to speak with me directly," Elizabeth replied. She kept her face taut, stuffing down the strange surge of maternal panic she got when she looked at the picture. For all appearances, Ron Stoppable looked back at her from the folder, wearing a fearsome frown that chilled her blood. Snapping the folder shut, she said, "I assume you have more than a folder full of pictures."

The smug returned to his face. "The GJ Intelligence Division has been given full tactical clearance to apprehend the Stoppable boy. We also have orders to bring Possible in as a collaborator." He pointed to the photo in her hands, to a specific corner, where a woman drove her fist into the face of a GJ sentry. The woman's features were hidden behind an unmistakable mane of hair.

Cocking a brow, Elizabeth struggled to maintain the remainder of her mask. "You're arresting Team Possible," she said.

"I thought that obvious from the photo," he replied stiffly. Then, with a twisted smirk, he added, "I also thought you might like to know before I effectively cripple your ability to do your job."

A grunting laugh escaped the tight line of Elizabeth's mouth. "How nice of my subordinate to keep me informed when he's taking over my tactical units."

"Naturally, Director," he said, returning her sarcasm with a little bow. "It's my pleasure. I know you'd be interested in your favorite little freelancers' betrayal. I'm expecting a simple operation to effect their capture."

Doctor Elizabeth Brant, the director of Global Justice and Senior Officer for Tactical Operations, ignored her subordinate's prattling as she wondered how it had come to this. For Cameron's sake, she hoped he was prepared; Team Possible wouldn't go down easily. Nor would they go down alone.

"Nothing about this is simple, Agent Du," Doctor Director told him. "Least of all containing Team Possible. I hope you're ready for a war, because that's exactly what you're about to start."

* * *

"The first meeting of the Middleton Council of War will now come to order," Ron Stoppable announced, and banged a hard-shell taco on the tabletop in lieu of a gavel. A handful of eyes in the campus Bueno Nacho turned his way, and then turned away with disinterest. Ron took no note of their notice, turning instead to the lovelier half of the council seated across from him. "We will now read the minutes from our last meeting."

Monique's brows mashed together. She exchanged glances with Kim before turning an annoyed look back at Ron. "How can we have minutes from another meeting if this is the first one?" she asked snappishly. Her lofted arm waggled in the air, held up by a pasty plaster cast and brace attached to her body. The souvenir from her epic battle with Duff Killigan was covered in signatures and doodles, courtesy of the rest of her world-saving cohorts.

Ron's taco gavel shattered in another round of banging. "This court will not tolerate dissention!" he barked. Then he pulled a face as he examined the syrupy beans and Grade-D meat dripping from his hand. "Ugh. Mister Joint-Chairman of Committee, if you please?"

A pink blur slithered down Ron's arm and engulfed his hand, burbling contently. Both girls cringed with disgust as the taco remains vanished into the blob. Kim listened to Rufus's slurping and Ron's giggling, and suppressed a shudder. "I don't care how long it's been or how useful it is," said Kim. "That gooey, morph-thing trick will always be way gross."

"Sticks and stones can't break my boy's bones," Ron razzed her, and tickled the shapeless rodent covering his hand. "Not that he has them anymore."

"Can we get on with this?" Kim asked more impatiently than she meant to. The reason for their meeting struck a raw nerve within her she had long since forgotten about, and it bothered her to no end that such petty considerations still bothered her at all. She tugged the strap of her sling, remembering her other annoyance with a twinge of her elbow. Between the two problems, she had more than she could stand, and didn't need Ron dragging out this ridiculous meeting he had called.

Clearing his throat, Ron drew himself upright and hardened his expression. Rufus dropped to the table and reassumed his rodent shape, saluting as Ron said, "Right. For this Council's first and only order of business, I hereby present my evidence as grounds for a full-blown Category Five Red Alert."

He pulled from his pocket a small, stiff square of paper. Its ornate embossing glinted as he laid it upon the table. Their annoyance fell into stony resolve in the face of this awesome dilemma.

"The Middleton High School's 'Where Are They Now?' Reunion," said Ron, speaking their collective fear aloud. "The bastard brainchild of one Bonita Q. Rockwaller."

Kim regarded the invite like it was radioactive. True to her expectations, she had received her own "lost" invitation the day after her encounter with Bonnie. A quick call had confirmed the same for Ron and Monique. Ron had decided that they would meet at the Bueno Nacho to concoct a plan of attack for dealing with Bonnie's shrewd social posturing. "A one-year reunion," she uttered. "I still can't believe it."

With a shake of her head, Monique said, "I can. If there was ever an ego big enough to organize a school function just to brag to her old clique…"

"So then it's agreed," said Ron, taking the invite in hand. He passed the invite to Rufus, who straightened its crease, brushed it clean, and then devoured it in a single bite. In the meantime, Ron announced, "We each find one obscure, non-terminal illness with which to 'suffer' for the duration of the crisis. I, myself, will be going with dysentery."

Monique made a wry face. "Charming," she said, watching the cardboard invite stretch and warp Rufus's head before he compacted it into his bizarre biology. "But won't your folks be a little concerned when you start pretending to have a gold rush era disease?"

"Not an issue," Ron assured her, leaning back in the booth. He laced his fingers behind his head and sighed. "Dad went with Mom to her seminar overseas. Thought he could get some networking done for whatever it is he does. Actuators, or whatever."

A devious sparkle lit Monique's eye, igniting mischievous flames behind her smile. "So," she purred, glancing between the couple, "Your parents are out of town for the rest of the week. You've got a whole house just for you…"

Kim caught the suggestive tone and colored her cheeks accordingly. Ron circumnavigated Monique's innuendo with masterful density. "With one annoying exception, yeah," he said. "Brief reprieve from the humiliation of living with your parents again after giving up the single, independent life by way of explosion."

"Plenty of privacy," Monique stressed. She leaned forward, drilling her gaze into his listless eyes. "In that big, cold, empty house." Kim's blush worsened as Monique added, "Nobody to keep you warm at night."

Inspiration lit in Ron's eyes as Monique slid back. "Oh, hey!" he said, glancing between his ladies. "Why don't you guys come over tonight for dinner? I'll whip up a Stoppable Special guaranteed to delight the buds."

Rufus pratfalled into a pile of empty taco wrappers as Monique slapped her face with her one good hand.

A tiny smile blossomed out of Kim's blush. She reached forward and grasped Ron's hand, squeezing it. "Sounds like a plan," she said, and brought his enormous knuckles to her lips. Rumbling from her stomach broke her kiss, calling her gaze past her green tank top to the bare midriff below. "But I think I'll find something to tide me over in the meantime. Anything?" she asked them. At the shake of their heads, she rose from the book, giving Ron a wink. "Back in a flash."

Kim floated away, letting her eyes linger on Ron's grin. Her feet hardly scraped the floor on her way to the counter, where she ordered a random salad combo on autopilot. Her thoughts were firmly locked back in the booth with her boyfriend.

Boyfriend. If someone had told the Kim Possible of two years ago that she'd be dating her best friend, she would have laughed herself into a coma. But there she stood, with a secret smile that baffled the Bueno Nacho staff as they handed her a new tray. Her smile came courtesy of the very best boyfriend she could ask for, a kind and gentle soul that intuited her needs and desires before even she realized them. A boyfriend and more, because it meant she no longer had to choose between a love life and a close relationship with her best friend. She had her cake, and she ate it in bliss.

On her way back to the booth, Kim caught sight of her friends deep in conversation. The expression on Monique's face piqued Kim's curiosity, fueling the teen spy in Kim. Crouching low, Kim crept along the opposite row of booths behind a low divider wall, intent upon surprising her friends in the event that they were talking about her.

"—really heating up," she heard Monique say snidely. It was all Kim could do to choke down a giggle. "That hot lip-on-hand action was a little too racy for public. My word."

Ron's reply came as a breezy, "Things are going great, Mon. KP an' me are vibing better than ever."

Another giggle clawed at Kim's throat. She could hear Monique rolling her eyes. "And which base is 'vibing' at?"

"Base?" Kim heard Ron say with patented confusion.

"First base. Right." Kim listened to Monique lean against the table. There came a subtle squeak of buttocks on vinyl; Ron was fidgeting. "So what's the holdup, Ron-meo? Your Juliet awaits!" said Monique.

More squeaking. More fidgeting. "C'mon, Mon. It's not like that," insisted Ron.

Kim felt her face fold at the quiver in his voice. She knelt closer to the divider in the empty booth, forgetting her playful plan to surprise them.

A brief pause. "Everything okay between you two?" Monique asked, this time without snide or teasing tone.

"Everything's hunky-dory, Mon. Couldn't be dorier or hunkeir, actually."

Kim listened as Monique's disbelief became tangible. She could taste it on the air as she heard, "You think all that karate crud could save you?" A sharp knock rang out; Monique had rapped her cast on the table. "I can still whup you one-handed, Blondie. Now stop fronting and spill."

Empty laughter answered her, tugging the corners of Kim's mouth down further. "Okay," said Ron, "okay. I guess…" He trailed off, probably checking over his shoulder. Kim bit back a stale breath, listening. "I'm kind of wishing the other shoe would just drop already."

"Other…" said Monique. The temperature in their booth dropped, sending a chill through Kim. "Other shoe? Okay, this isn't fun anymore. And you are thirty-one flavors of crazy, boy!"

The leaden air in Kim's chest grew stale, but she held it. "C'mon," Ron said again. "Look how much crap we had to go through just to get this far." His voice dipped, just a little. "I'm a little surprised the shoe's taking so long."

The brief, localized cold snap gave way to the intense heat rolling off of Monique's snappish tongue. "I take it back," she said. "You aren't crazy. You're just dumb. Kim is the crazy one. She's crazy about you!"

"Sure, now," Ron retorted with false cheer. "But that's just how rebounds work. You have fun with them, and then it's back to business. And I… I'm cool with that," he said.

"You've been together for a month, stupid," Monique said, exasperated. "Nobody rebounds for a month."

One final pause hung I the roiling air. Kim lost her breath in a sigh. Luckily, Ron did the same simultaneously. "All I know," Ron said, "Is that, as good as I've got it, that other shoe has to be on its way. But hey, at least I've had Kim for this long. Who am I to complain?"

Kim crept away, leaving her tray behind on the floor. Once back at the end of the row, she stood and straightened her tank top, and smoothed the wrinkles from her brow. Groomed, Kim walked back to their booth in a controlled gait. She tried not to grimace as Ron and Monique cut their argument short to smile at her.

"Hey, KP," Ron said. He gave her empty hands a glance, and asked, "Where's the snackage? I changed my mind, and was gonna nosh off of yours."

She returned his smile wanly. "Not so hungry after all," she replied, sliding next to Monique. Her girlfriend shot Kim a sidelong glance that went ignored. "So," she said with forced cheer, "Dinner at your place tonight?"

Ron nodded, and then checked his watch. "Only if I get a move on," he said. "You wanna come with? I need to swing by your place anyway, and take care of your intruder problem."

"I've got some…things to do," Kim replied lamely. "Go on ahead. I might catch up to you at my place." The brush of his lips on her cheek barely registered with Kim. "Thanks."

As Ron left the restaurant, Monique watched his airy meanderings with a shake of her head. "I swear, there's no lab on Earth that could measure the density of that boy's head." She brought her smile back up to Kim, where she lost it in the redhead's stunned silence. A moment of confusion worked through Monique's face, paving the way for dawning clarity. "Oh no," she uttered. "No, no, no, no, no, I know that look. I know that look, and you are not even gonna start with me. Nu-uh. Not gonna happen."

"Other shoe?" murmured Kim. Her face darkened with the coming storm of her shout: "Other shoe!"

"Oh. My. God." Monique's forehead struck the tabletop, which muffled her moan. "I blame myself," she said into the table. "I showed an interest. I thought that the drama was over, and the gossip would be juicy. Bad Monique. Bad, bad Monique. You need to learn from your mistakes, not recycle them."

Kim ignored her theatrics. "Monique, Ron thinks I'm going to use him and lose him. He thinks… How could he think something so horrible? Am I a bad girlfriend? I think I'm a great girlfriend! Aren't I a great girlfriend?"

Monique sat up with her eyes crushed shut. Her fingertips worked at her temples as she chanted, "Calm blue ocean. You're on a calm blue ocean where nothing can bother you."

"Monique!"

"Stupid, obnoxious seagull," muttered Monique, her eyes still shut.

Kim pulled Monique's hands down. "Monique," she said with a pleading look. "Help. Please. What's going on that Ron can talk to you about that he can't talk to me about?"

The hurt in Kim's eyes left Monique no other alternatives. Defeat rang in her sigh. "Okay," Monique said in a hollow voice. "Fine. You're going to listen and not talk. Understand?" At Kim's nod, Monique steeled herself with a deep breath. Two more breaths just like it preceded her speech: "Kim, I know you're totally all about Ron now. Far as I've seen, you have the girlfriend thing down pat." She pierced Kim's eyes with her own, and said, "But you have no idea what Ron was like before."

"But—"

"Ap-bup-bup-bup-bup!" said Monique, thrusting a finger up to cut Kim off. "Talking. You shush." Once Kim had settled back, Monique ignored her irritated look and continued, "You weren't there for all the agonizing, and the poetry, and the pining, and the critical, critical sad."

The woe of the thought weighed Kim's eyes to the table. "I never meant to… Wait." Looking up, she asked, "There was poetry?"

Monique shivered. "Look," she said, "The point is, Ron's spent a lot of time thinking that you don't think of him the way he thinks of you. He thinks that you think of him as a placeholder, and that you're thinking about guys that he thinks you think are more your speed. Do you understand?"

"I think," said Kim. She scratched her head.

"Ron trusts you as a friend," said Monique. "And he trusts you as a partner. But you've broken his heart a dozen times without ever realizing it."

Kim sank into her booth, collapsing into her folded arms. The tabletop hid her angry pout. "So I'll just sit back and watch the best relationship I've ever had spiral down the tubes because I wasn't the one that fell in love first, and because it—"

She flinched at the sharp rap of knuckles on her skull. Monique drew her hand back and glared. "Who are you? Who are you?" Before Kim could answer, Monique told her, "You are Kim-Effing-Possible! You climb mountains and surf lava flows for the hell of it. You have a body that makes supermodels purge with envy. You…" She pulled a lilac device from her pocket and shoved its screen into Kim's face, thumbing its main switch. "You have a fifteen-year-old fixer who can get you anywhere in the world in three hours or your pizza's free!"

_"Um, hello?"_ Wade said, staring quizzically at the enormous nose occupying his own screen.

Monique stuffed her Kimmunicator back into her pocket. Her casted arm jabbed its hand at Kim, widening Kim's dumbfounded eyes. "You want Ron? You fight for him."

"Yeah?" Kim asked hesitantly.

"You make him see how much you care about him!" cried Monique.

Kim's expression coalesced into confidence. "Yeah," she said again. "Yeah!"

"You take him," said Monique, clutching and twisting an imaginary Ron in her good hand, "And you break him. You grind him down into a shadow of his former self, and then you rebuild that shattered psyche into the perfect boyfriend. One who leaves the seat down, and who will finally bring me flowers on days **besides** my birthday, and—"

"Mon! Monique!" Kim snapped her fingers, ending Monique's tirade. "I think I'll just stick with the 'fighting' thing." Biting her lip, she eased back and asked, "So how do I do that?"

Blinking away her tangent, Monique got herself back on the subject. "Oh. Right. Well, you could always…you know."

Kim frowned at the coy expression creeping across Monique's face. "You can't be serious," she said flatly.

"Come on," Monique said again, giving her a look. "Seal the deal. Take the plunge."

"You are serious," said Kim. "Then you must also be crazy. Ron and I don't do that!"

A waggling finger punctuated Monique's rebuttal. "Yet. You and Ron don't do that 'yet.' But c'mon, what's the big deal? Guys are simple!" She erected two of her fingers and thrust them at Kim with repetitive jerks. "It's as easy as one, two—"

Kim tackled the fingers and slapped them onto the tabletop. Traces of red crept down from her scowl and into her cheeks as she glowered at Monique, and cast a self-conscious glance around the restaurant. "Mon," she hissed, "Will you just cut that out? This isn't a topic I want to discuss in a Bueno Nacho. Or anywhere."

A new smile dawned on Monique's lips. She rested her good arm on the back of her bench and stifled a laugh. "You are such a prude," she sniggered.

"I am not!"

"Oh, puh-leaze," scoffed Monique. "Can you even do this?" Monique twisted around and tapped the bald head of the man sitting in the booth behind her. The dour man turned, his scowl quizzical. "Hey, pal," she said, smiling brightly. "Sexual intercourse."

His eyes darted back and forth. "What, is that an offer?" he asked, confused.

Monique rolled her eyes. "Turn yourself around, Jack," she said, and did just that herself. To Kim, she opened her hand as though offering the secret of the universe. "You see? Welcome to adulthood, Kimmie."

Every ounce of blood that Kim possessed pooled in her face, flushing it a deeper crimson. The vinyl seat beneath her squeaked with her squirming. "That isn't it at all," she hissed into her hand, feeling a thousand eyes swarm around her in the restaurant. "I just…I'm not…I won't…"

"Pru-ude," sang Monique.

"I am not!" Kim snapped. Then she shrank back as the eyes around her closed in. "Monique, I am not going to seduce my boyfriend to solve our relationship problems. That sets a seriously dangerous precedent," she said.

Monique leaned forward and rapped the table. "Mmm, okay. Barring the fact that 'seduce my boyfriend' is the dumbest phrase to ever come out of your mouth, I have four good reasons for you to get horizontal with Ron." Her casted hand waggled a finger for every one of Monique's points: "One, it's the surest way to prove your fidelity to Ron. Two, you've known Ron since dinosaurs invented dirt. Three, you're a grown woman capable of making her own decisions…too bad for the rest of us that I have to make them for you, but whatever."

Kim felt certain that her blush would never fade. "How charming," she drawled, and blew an impatient breath. "Do I want to know what number four is, or should I skip to the end, where I tell you how wrong you are?"

"Because you love him."

The trump card stole Kim's voice, leaving her to seethe and gape simultaneously at Monique's smug look in helpless silence. Breath hurtled into her lungs to answer Monique, only to rush back out through flapping lips. She drew another breath with the same intent, to the same effect. All the while, Monique's cheshire victory infuriated her.

"Oh, sheathe those dagger eyes, girl," said Monique. "They won't work on me. The fact of the matter is, you aren't a kid anymore, and neither is Ron. You're both adults, and you both love each other." She shrugged. "What could be more natural? Besides, have you sized that boy's feet?" A ferocious smile spread through Monique's face as she leaned conspiratorially toward Kim. "They're huge! Let him put those big shoes to use running a couple of the bases. You might actually enjoy yourself," she added in a mutter.

Kim's glare continued as she found her voice again. "Monique, you just don't get it. Ron and I aren't like that at all. We're in a good place right now, and I don't want to mess it up, okay? I mean, we've never even been on a date. I haven't even thought about…"

She trailed off. In one perfect verbal blunder, she had discovered the root of the problem. Her thoughts lined up. Her vision cleared. Kim knew what she had to do.

Kim rose in a rush, her slung arm bouncing painfully as she scrambled out of the booth. Such was her hurry that she had to double-back for her purse. She offered Monique an apologetic look as she did so. "I gotta go, Mon. Sorry," she said.

"What? Where?" This sudden rush was unlike Kim. Monique watched the usually calm and collected hero fumble with her purse. "Where are you—"?

"You were right," Kim said as she juggled her purse onto her one good arm. "Actually, you were wrong, but kind of right. Just right enough to get me to see…well, never mind. I just need to get to the mall before dinner tonight."

"Oh." True, Monique was confused. But at least she knew that Kim had found the right path; through the Mall, all things may be made clear and right. "Want me to—"

"Solo thing. Sorry. Make it up to you? I'll see you tonight at dinner!"

Kim compressed the four thoughts into a blur of speech as she disappeared out the door. Bobbing in her wake, Monique just scratched her head and slurped her soda. "Do you see what happens when you get involved, Brain?" she said. "Are you really so deprived of romance that you need to butt into Kim's, even though it's always, always, _always_ a pain?" Groaning, she collapsed back in the booth, knocking the man behind her with her cast arm. "Girl, you need to get laid something awful."

The bald man turned. "Huh?"

"Not you," she groused.

* * *

There had been a time in the distant past when Ron Stoppable had knocked to gain entry to the Possible household. He had once asked shyly, politely, if he could stay over for meals, or watch television, or search (oh so respectfully!) for a snack in the refrigerator. He had minded his Ps and Qs with the utmost care. Those salad days had come to a close on the momentous occasion he and Kim had removed the training wheels from their bikes.

Now, as he had for over ten years, Ron walked through their front door without so much as a shout of greeting. He didn't need to call out to know where the action was. The steady stream of digitized explosions and muttered curses led him to the living room.

"Well, if it isn't Scarface and Scarface," he said as he walked in. "Carrying on your sister's proud legacy of babysitting with violent videogames and almost-swears, eh?" The television behind Ron belched up shrieks and splatters as a wave of pixel blood struck the other side of the screen.

Jim and Tim blushed at Ron's nickname for them, flooding the scar each twin carried on his cheek with red. The pride they carried for their scars, the superhero souvenirs of their battle with Duff Killigan, had been so great that Ron couldn't resist teasing them for it. "Shut the crap up, Ron," Jim snapped.

Leaning opposite his brother on the couch, Tim angled his wireless controller around the blond bother. "And move your dang head. We're already getting killed here."

Ron chuckled and sat down on the floor next to the game's third player. She lay on her back with her stubby legs propped against the couch. The controller she wrestled in her tiny hands clicked rapid commands to her avatar in the game. Her almond eyes glinted with focus, but she grinned as Ron settled beside her and gently teased her stomach. The golden pudge protruding from her blue 'Team Go!' T-shirt contrasted sharply with his pale skin. Ron didn't notice the differences anymore, and hadn't noticed since the first week the girl had barged into his life without warning.

"You don't think they're mad because my Intruder is beating them, do you?" Ron asked the girl.

Hana Stoppable grinned and giggled at Ron's tickle. "Nu-uh, Wana," she said. "I'm not beating them. I'm emasculating them in a digital medium."

He kissed her forehead, careful not to block her view as she crushed the in-game twins. "And I'm very proud of you," he said.

The twins groaned in unison as Hana's character laid waste to their health bars. Their digital masculinity and their first-person soldiers suffered grievous losses at her strafing attack. "You guys always said it was cute when I won," Hana said at their moaning.

"Yeah, back when we let you win," grumbled Tim. Then he cried out in tandem with his character's surround-sound death rattle. He tossed his controller aside. "Seriously, I call foul!"

Now alone, Jim gritted his teeth and sent his character on a desperate charge against Hana's. "Four-year-olds aren't this smart or this good," he barked. His brother wiped his brow for him, keeping his flashing eyes clear. "It's unnatural!"

Ron gave them both a grin. "Now you've got a taste of my pain, Scarface. Not always fun growing up around kids who are scary smarter than you, is it?" He sat there a moment, reveling in the poetic justice of Kim's genius brothers losing at their own game. His watch, however, reminded him that he had a meal to prepare, and no fewer than three hungry ladies who would ill tolerate delays. "Think you can finish him off, Hana? I need to get a jump start on dinner."

Even as he asked, Jim yowled and chucked his controller. His character knelt in the television, clutching a bullet wound the size of a basketball. Hana's character danced on the screen with a smoking rocket launcher while the pint-sized player grinned up at her big brother in real life.

"Just call me Hana Solo," she said. "I shoot first."

* * *

He stared up at the cold, otherworldly, gunmetal lines of the assembled Entropy Cannon with a deadened sense of accomplishment. The enormous weapon consumed most of the vacancy of the central chamber, yet it could not lessen the emptiness he felt when standing in its presence. His first, best achievement, the Cannon meant nothing to him. It was simply one more curio for his father's lair. His home.

Home. The word struck him as ill-fitting for the dim, cavernous building from which his father launched their mission. When he thought of home, a vivid image surfaced in his mind: a dingy, dim little hole of an apartment. He had never passed through its cracked and peeling door. He had never sat upon its secondhand futon, or been in either of its miniscule bedrooms. Nevertheless, this apartment of his thoughts instilled in him a sense of safety and belonging that his father's lair could not.

"Hey, Red!"

Shego's call drew his eyes out of the apartment and to the expansive room's catwalk above. She leaned over its railing, grinning down at him from the upper deck. That grin disappeared in a curtain of black hair as she rolled over the rail and flipped into the open air. Shego landed at his side in a crouch, rising slowly. Her eyes leered mockingly as they traveled up to his face.

He blinked, examining her in return. The curve of her body captivated him in strange new ways. He had seen her dozens of times before, both in the before-dreams and during their caper together, but he had been too busy or confused to notice her curve before. The swell of her chest, the glide of her hips, the grace of her neck, the sinew of her legs, all confounded and captivated and frustrated him in a way he did not quite understand. Wisely, he did not make mention of this confusion. Shego, he had discovered, had little patience for his questions or his attention.

"Lady Shego," he said, addressing her in the obsequious tone his father had instilled in him.

"Take a picture," she said of his stare, "it'll last longer." But her own leer lost its mirth, taking on a tiny glimmer of hunger instead. She shook the glimmer away and added, "And cut out that 'Lady' crap. It's bad enough that Doctor Dad calls me that. Maybe I can't stop him, but by God, I stole you into this world, and I can steal you right back out."

His gaze continued up and down her body as he thought it over. This time, his analysis was purely technical, not aesthetic. "I could beat you," he decided without a hint of modesty.

Shego's good humor rolled into a tailspin and slammed into the ground. She pushed imaginary sleeves up the skintight colors of her jumpsuit and stalked forward with fire in her eyes. "Why you cocky little piece of ugly," she growled.

"I would take care, Lady Shego," Dementor's thick voice echoed through the chamber. His two warriors looked up to see him lording from where Shego had jumped. "Our son has no pride or shame. If he said it, it is probably true." Rather than duplicate Shego's acrobatic feat, Dementor descended a spiraling staircase to the chamber floor. "An excellent job retrieving my Cannon, by the way." He ran his sausage fingers across the weapon's casing. Without turning, he asked, "Were you seen?"

Shego scowled. "I'm gonna make you pay for making me wear that wig. But yeah, Red here jumped up and down in front of the cameras while your goon squad packed the crates, just like you said."

"Excellent. Now leave us."

Shego's look could have melted steel as she stomped away, leaving Dementor alone with him. The boy watched Shego depart with rapt interest in her canting hips. His attentions did not escape his father's notice. The boy blushed lightly at Dementor's chuckle, feeling uneasy with this new sensation of embarrassment. He felt the need to explain himself, and said, "In battle, I couldn't help but notice the way Shego moves and…bends." Worriedly, he asked, "Is something wrong with me?"

Dementor's laugh filled the chamber. "No," he assured his brawny son with a slap to the back. "Nothing is wrong. Now tell me, how did the battle go?"

"I did as you told me, Father," the boy said, looking up at the spoils of his hunt. "The Global Justice agents could not match me. I…" He stared down at his own hands, remembering his surprise at the skill and dexterity he had wielded. "How can I fight like this, Father?"

The doting smile on Dementor's lips straightened. He reached up, taking his warrior by the waist, and led him around the Entropy Cannon. "You had very unique teachers, my son. Which is what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you love your father?"

The boy glanced over, startled by the question. In his three weeks of life, he had never even thought to question his love for Dementor. Sons were supposed to love their fathers. It was the way of things. "Of course I do," he said.

"Good," said Dementor, as he led the boy from the chamber. "Because your next assignment will be a difficult one, and also vital to our cause. My Cannon requires a certain device in order for me to modify it to its new purpose."

"What purpose is that, Father?" the boy asked.

A solemn look settled into the gaps of Dementor's helmet as he looked up at his child. "We are going to fulfill your purpose in life, my son. We are going to save the world from itself. It will not be easy," he warned the boy. "There will be those who will try and stop us. They will call us villains. But in the end, we must triumph."

"I am not afraid." The words left the boy's mouth without thought or pause. "I know I can overcome all who would stop us, Father. I can do anything."

His words quirked Dementor's brow. "You will," he said. "But there is something we must discuss first."

"What?"

"Your name," said Dementor, leading his boy down the hall.

* * *

"You okay, Wana?"

The question failed to pierce the fog surrounding her steed as Hana rode toward home on the sidewalks of Middleton. She traded glances with Rufus, who sat between her pigtails in lazy delight. The mole rat could only shrug at their shared steed's listless silence. Seated on his shoulders, Hana could practically hear the rusty effort of cogs beneath Ron's shaggy blond crown. Though his grip on her legs was sure and strong, his path seemed erratic, as though he were purposely walking home in a roundabout manner.

She rapped her pudgy knuckles on his head. "Ron, what's wrong? This is the third time we've walked past our street."

"Muh?" Ron looked up from the sidewalk and caught his bearings. His masterful sense of direction had missed the street by half a block. Chagrinned, he reversed course and started back. "Sorry, Hana. Got a little lost, I guess. Must be all this extra weight."

The second he turned around, he felt it again: a sharp, tingling sensation in the back of his skull. He had felt it unconsciously after leaving the Possibles' with his sister in tow. As they drew closer to home, the feeling grew from the barest mental tickle to an irrepressible buzz. Without realizing it, Ron had steered them around the neighborhood, keeping them from going home because of that tingle.

He had no idea what it meant. Experience taught Ron that anything he didn't understand could be very bad for him, which explained why his subconscious had kept them on the move. Now, confronted with the delay his subconscious had engineered, he couldn't think of a real reason to continue walking around, and so pressed ahead.

Hana wasn't fooled by his paltry jibe. "Something's bothering you, Ron. What is it?" she asked.

Ron wished he knew. Whatever the tingle was, it vanished the instant he began concentrating on it. Bereft of its cryptic meaning, he shrugged his sister higher onto his shoulders and turned onto the right street. "Nothing," he said.

"Is it Kim?" Hana asked. "She's not mad at you, is she? What did you do this time?"

"Rest easy, Intruder-o'-My-Personal-Life. Kim and I are as square as can be."

"S'okay if things aren't all right," the four-year-old said sagely. "Relationships between two people as young as you and Kim are often rocky, especially when the couple is transitioning from a long friendship into a romance, like you guys are."

Ron shook his head as they reached the front door. He ducked to ensure that no one bumped her head on the awning. "Oh, no, Kiddo. I've had all the Kim-centric opinions I can stomach for one day. And no more daytime talk shows for you."

"Aww…" When they got inside, Ron swung Hana from his shoulders, turning her disappointed moan into a shriek of delight. She dangled from his arm, upside-down, with Rufus swinging from her pigtails. "I like Montel," she insisted. "An' I like Kim, too. So don't screw it up. She makes you more fun, even if you have to do all that yucky kissing."

"Yeah, well, you just wait. It's yucky now, but in ten years, it'll be all you can think about." He swung her again and began toward the stairs. "Now c'mon. You need a nap before dinnertime. I don't want you cranky when our ladies arrive."

Disappointment tugged Hana's lips down. But then she brightened. "Okay, but you gotta tuck me in with Monkey Feet."

Ron shivered and looked down at his size sixteen shoes. "Ugh. No way, Hana. I'm not in the mood for—"

"Monkey Feet! Monkey Feet!" Hana shouted at the top of her lungs, clinging to Ron's arm with her whole body. "I want Monkey Feet!"

Ron tried shaking her loose, but Hana's insistence was ironclad. "Hana, if you're super smart, you can be super mature too," he told her. "Yelling and whining won't get you anywhere. Believe me, I've done plenty of both with Kim, and I got nothin'."

Smug ingenuity dawned in Hana's face. She lessened her grip and dangled, giggling, as Rufus scampered onto her shoulder. "Fine," she said calmly. "If you don't tuck me in with Monkey Feet, I'll tell Kim." They both looked down, she in triumph, he in horror. When he returned his gaze to hers, Hana was every inch a smile. "I'll tell her about the tattoo on your palm that you hide with makeup. I'll tell her how you wax your arms and your back. And I'll tell her why your shoes jumped five sizes."

"Buh…zuh…yuh…?"

"What's the matter, Wana? Bullying and blackmail aren't mature enough for you?" Hana asked sweetly.

Grumbling, Ron shucked his shoes and peeled off his socks, all without the aid of his hands, while glaring at Hana the whole time. "The tweebs are right. You are too smart," he said.

"Monkey Feet," Hana commanded, grinning.

Ron flipped Hana into the air with a flick of his arm. Then he sprang onto his hands, inverting himself, and brought the ankle-bound banes of his existence up to catch his squealing sister and his excited mole rat. Both bothersome pests fell into the grasp of his feet, which cupped the pair in long, nimble toes.

One month ago, Ron had magically siphoned an immense amount of mystical monkey power out of Monkey Fist, forever severing the villain's connection to the simian arcane. That power, apparently possessed of its own sense of humor, had seen fit to transfer all of Monkey Fist's monkey qualities into Ron. The enhanced physical prowess and flexibility had come at a high price. Ron didn't mind the green silhouette of a monkey tattooed onto his palm (courtesy of the Amulet of the Monkey King), or his enlarged knuckles dusted with wispy hairs. But nothing could endear Ron to the fact that his feet had been transformed into fully dexterous hand-like appendages. He had hidden them from almost everyone with larger shoes and a sudden dislike of sandals.

Of course, Hana had loved his hand-feet from the moment she had barged into his room to discover him barefoot. She and Rufus sang with glee as Ron juggled them back and forth between his feet while he walked on his hands up the stairs. "Who's that walking down the street?" crooned Hana. "It's just Wana's new Monkey Feet! La-la-la-la-la, Monkey Feet!"

In spite of his podiatric misery, Ron couldn't help but smirk at the innocent delight his sister took in his curse. He was glad to not have to hide his part of himself from one of the two most important women in his life, even if that openness did come with a price. He only hoped that when Kim found out—when, not if, for he knew Kim to be far cleverer than he—she could look at them with a fraction of Hana's unconditional love.

"La, la, la," he sang.

* * *

Doctor Director watched the pair disappear into the house. An irrepressible smile surfaced at the waning sight of the little girl atop her brother's shoulders. Perhaps the Ron Factor hadn't provided Global Justice with the ultimate key to victory, but no one could deny that it was something special. Then her smile disappeared as she recalled what she was about to do to him.

She sat with Du in the back of a black, nondescript truck parked across the street from the Stoppable house. Any questioning glances would see just a delivery truck that was lingering a little too long in deep suburbia: odd, but not inexplicable. Surveillance monitors lined one entire side of the truck's interior, leaving precious little space for Doctor Director and the broad and brawny Du to move about. Still, Doctor Director would have made him twice as large if it meant she could do something about the man's abrasive personality.

"We may have a problem," Du said. He had switched one of his monitors to display a penetrating infrared image of the house, and had zoomed in on the entryway. Two blobs of heat lingered a moment before staggering up the stairs (was Stoppable upside-down?) and into the smaller bedroom. Du scowled at the image and rubbed his jaw. "The Stoppable boy is isolating his sister. He could be aware that we intend to engage, and is moving her out of the line of fire."

She sighed at the thermographic Ron bending over a bed to kiss the forehead of his thermographic sister. "Occam's Razor, Cam. It's afternoon, and he just got the girl home. It's naptime. Stoppable's clueless."

Du harrumphed and glared harder at the monitor. "That's 'Commander Du,' Madam Director. I hope you haven't forgotten that I invited you along on this mission as a courtesy."

"How generous of you," Doctor Director said dryly.

Together, they watched Stoppable wrest his sister into bed and then slide down the banister of the stairs. It was hard to believe that this young man had decimated and devastated their facility in Boise less than twenty-four hours ago. In point of fact, Doctor Director did not believe it at all, but the decision was out of her hands. Du had gone over her head. While she could make him pay for such a colossal insult professionally, it left her powerless to stop this impending disaster. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were behind Du in his capture of Team Possible.

She broke their non-staring contest with a sidelong glance. Du's face was hard, creased with new lines since last she'd seen him. They had never agreed professionally, but never before had she questioned his dedication to his work. She even admired the passionless focus with which he approached every problem. Now there was something new in his face, something that had broke his detached calm. It didn't take a genius to figure out what.

"Cam," she said, "there's no need to attack. You can contact Possible and ask her to surrender. If you explained the situation—"

His eyes never left the thermal image of Ron gallivanting about the kitchen. "Elizabeth," he said, with undue emphasis on her name, "I believe that an excess of trust and faith in these teenagers is where this particular problem originated from. I don't intend to repeat that mistake."

"You can't seriously launch a full-scale assault on a house on American soil. The collateral risk alone makes your plan unacceptable. And you haven't even explored diplomacy."

A snort answered her concern. "These two make your own soldiers look like rank amateurs, and you want to talk them down? They now possess one of the most formidable weapons of mass destruction ever conceived of. If they located a power source for the Cannon, they could wipe out entire cities with the press of a button. Maybe you feel comfortable letting a situation degrade to that point, but I rather like the thought of preemptive action."

Doctor Director tightened her jaw. "I realize that you're going through a hard time right now," she said slowly and evenly. "That's why I'm going to forget that you just insulted my entire Tactical Division, except to remind you that GJ already stops nine encounters out of ten before they ever escalate to Alpha Priorities."

"But it's that tenth time that everyone sees, isn't it? It's that tenth time you need your little heroes for. Now your little heroes have become what you always needed them to stop. Irony itself. And I'll thank you not to tiptoe around me as though I were a grieving widow," he added coolly.

A deep breath worked through Doctor Director's chest as she closed her eye. "Cam," she said, "you can't pretend that it isn't affecting your judgment. This is a snipe hunt. Team Possible didn't have anything to do with—"

"My judgment," Du snapped crisply, "is as sound as ever. Which is more than I can say for you, ma'am. You may want to note that, in selecting the men for this mission, I've chosen trained agents for the capture instead of amateur civilians. I'm confident that having professionals on this mission will preclude those nasty collateral deaths you are worried about."

Doctor Director froze as though she had just been punched in the stomach. Du might as well have struck her, for all that his insinuation did to her. Her sympathy turned to guilt, and silenced her for the rest of the wait. She wished she could argue, but in her heart, she couldn't. Du's pain was her sin, indirectly or otherwise. And right now, stripped of the power to stop Du's impending assault, it meant that she would have to let Team Possible bear the brunt of her two worst sins.

* * *

Ron eased down to the open mouth of the oven. With mitted hand, he tilted the lid of the scorched pot on the oven rack and peered into the bubbling mass inside. It congealed nicely. "Ha! Emeril, eat your heart out, you fat, spicy loudmouth. You _can_ make a casserole using leftovers from five different meals," he crowed.

The back door of the house swung open and shut with a slam, admitting a set of footsteps into the kitchen. Ron's smile grew. He knew Kim took the same liberties he did with each other's houses, while Monique still felt inclined to ring the doorbell. "Hey, KP," he called, still halfway in the oven. "No worms for you, early bird. Dinner won't be for another twenty."

"Mmm, but I'm awfully hungry, Ron."

Something in her voice sounded off. Ron had heard Kim speak like that only once, though he couldn't quite recall when or why. The emotion dripping from her voice sounded like an odd combination of leisure, intrigue, and whimsy. "If you're hurtin' bad enough, Rufus should have the salad just about done. Rufus?"

A large salad bowl sat upon the island counter behind Ron. Tossing its leafy contents, Rufus turned and leaned on his salad tongs to offer Kim a greeting. Upon first sight of her, Rufus's jaw slackened and slapped the counter. His eyes became saucers. His voice became a ghost. He collapsed against the tongs, stricken.

Ron heard Kim moving closer as she answered, "I was thinking of something with a little more 'oomph' to it," in that strange voice.

Stirring the congealed mix of foods in the oven, Ron said, "Well, 'spicy' might be one of the flavors we get tonight. I haven't been very good with the groceries this week, so we're getting creative with dinner tonight. I'm thinking of calling it 'pot loaf.' What do you think? Catchy?"

An open palm answered Ron across the back of his jeans. Ron yelped as he felt an eager hand squeeze his butt. He jumped three feet in the air, turning on his way back to the ground. "KP!" he cried in mid-leap, "Wha—?"

All of Ron's higher brain functions ceased when he caught sight of Kim. She stood unbelievably close. Soft makeup touched her face into a stunning epitome of itself. Passionate red rimed her predatory smile. Her lustrous, strawberry-scented hair swept over one eye, casting her sultry gaze in shadow.

Ron's gaze dipped from her disquieting expression of hunger. A tight, silk blouse mimicked Kim's curves. Its collar hung wide open, with only a few of its buttons maintaining the mystery. The blouse ended above her waist, leaving ample space for her toned midriff before her skirt began halfway down her hips. Or rather, what little skirt she had. Traveling further, Ron's gaze discovered miles and miles of bare, smooth leg beneath the hem of the taut miniskirt. Towering heels capped the ends of her legs, making her calves do wonderfully shapeful things as she shifted her hips.

"Like it?" Kim's question snapped Ron's eyes back into safe territory, where her lingering gaze made him sweat. "I hope you don't mind, but I felt like dressing up."

"Heh." Ron chuckled humorlessly, tugged at the oppressive collar of his jersey, and tried desperately to find someplace on Kim for his eyes to go that wouldn't get him slapped. He flipped the oven door closed with his foot and backed away, giving Kim room to chase him to the stovetop. "Don't mind at all, KP," he said shakily. "Just wondering where the rest of your clothes got to, is all…"

_I felt like dressing up. Hope you don't mind._

The words flooded into Ron half a step ahead of his realization. The Moodulators! Kim's voice had possessed the eerily husky quality it had now when she had been emo-tized by the modulator in high school. He felt immense relief wash over him, and reached into her coifed banner of red hair. "Don't worry, KP. We'll get you sorted out in no time. Just hold still, 'kay?"

Kim waited with cheshire patience as Ron's fingertips plumbed the back of her neck. His touch revealed nothing, save for silky red locks and skin that felt too good. His relief turned to speechless panic as Kim held him by the waist and closed the gap between them. "Not this time, Ron," she said. "This time, it's all me. All for you."

"Ha!" Ron tried to back away. Kim followed, her hands on his hips like velvet steel. They circled the kitchen together until Ron bumped back against the island countertop. The force of his stop nearly knocked Rufus onto the floor. "Okay, KP, joke's over. You got me."

"Not the way I want you," Kim purred.

Ron's question vanished into Kim's lips. Her mouth pressed his, kissing, nipping, licking, until he opened his mouth in sheer surprise. Her kiss grew deeper still. She ran a hand through his messy hair. Her other caressed his chest. Too quickly, her mouth left his, eager to explore his cheek, his jaw line, his neck, his collarbone.

Ron gasped at her forceful teeth and closed his eyes. His hands acted on their own, testing the bare skin at her waist. Fingertips braved the hem of her blouse, teasing the smooth skin of her back. His exploration found no strap at her shoulder blades. He shivered as she pressed her chest into his. He felt wonderfully overwhelmed, and buried his face in her strawberry hair as she ran her hand up the inside of his jersey.

The tight ripple of Ron's muscle excited Kim to nip his neck even harder. She heard him gasp and felt him buck, and wondered if she had bit too hard, until Ron's hand slid down her back and to the very edge of her miniskirt. Evidently, he had taken her slap earlier to mean a mutual invitation. She smiled at the possibility, but pulled away before Ron could get his hands on anything.

"I've got a surprise for you, baby," she said throatily.

Ron leaned back against the counter, panting. His hand rested against his face as he now drank openly of Kim's enticing visage, as though he weren't sure she was real. "I'm pretty surprised already," he said breathlessly.

Kim gave him her sexiest smile. Her fingers tugged at the next button of her blouse, the only button doing its part. "Close your eyes," she instructed.

Curious, nervous, excited to the point of explosion, Ron nevertheless obeyed. He straightened and slowed his breathing with visible effort. He clenched his eyes, like a child about to receive a gift.

Splat.

Ron stiffened under the deluge of lettuce, tomato, carrots, and ranch dressing. His eyes remained closed for several seconds after the mess had landed on his head. A plastic salad bowl hung against the side of his head, dripping dressing down his neck, onto and into his jersey. Then, after sending his tongue out for a tentative taste test, he opened his eyes and carefully wiped his vision clear.

A smirking Kim waited on the other side of the ranch curtain with her mouth hidden behind her hand. Her blouse had employed its buttons all the way up to Kim's neck. Her face had lost its predatory edge, now crinkling in impish delight.

Tight-jawed, Ron stared at her bemusement in silence. His tongue flickered out every few seconds to wipe away the dressing that collected on his lips. As the moment grew longer, so too did Kim's giggles grow stronger, breaking from silence until they became full laughter at his expense. He glanced down at Rufus, hoping for some rodently wisdom on the subject. Rufus could only shrug helplessly, hiding a small smile of his own.

"I'm hoping at some point you're going to let me in on the joke," Ron said flatly. He accepted a towel from Rufus and mopped up the gunk from his face. A tilt of his head slid the bowl back into his eyes, ruining his towel's efforts with a fresh smear of dressing that made Kim laugh even harder.

Kim took pity on Ron, and plucked the bowl off of his head. "No joke," she said between giggles, setting the bowl back on the counter. "Just giving you exactly what you wanted."

Ron scowled and set about cleaning himself up again. Salad and dressing had infiltrated every crevasse in his torso. He was certain his hair would smell like ranch dressing until he grew out and cut the current crop. "I don't even like salad," he said.

"Not that. Your other shoe." Her simple statement stopped him cold. Kim leaned on the counter opposite him and savored the guilty look spreading on his face. "Was that a big enough shoe, or do you need me to drop another one?"

He knew he had been busted, and busted good. Still, she had dumped an appetizer on him. He had to try and salvage something of the high ground. "Funny," he said. "I remember me being there, and I remember Monique being there. Were you there?"

Kim lifted her hands in surrender. "I was eavesdropping. Guilty. But that doesn't excuse you from the fact that you were hiding some serious hang-ups about us from me. If you'll recall, bottling stuff like that is what got us an entire year of drama before. Remember?" she asked pointedly.

"I remember the drama," Ron said. "Oh, do I remember the drama. I'm just still not making the leap between me being worried about our relationship—oh, and by the by," he added, flicking lettuce off his nose, "if this is how you wind up telling me I'm doing something wrong, I can already tell I'm gonna have a blast. But I'm a little fuzzy how you went from "other shoe" to 'dress real sexy and then dump food on Ron.' It doesn't strike me a 'straight line' kind of thought."

Red crept into Kim's cheeks at his mention of the word "sexy." She suddenly felt much less self-conscious in her scrap of a skirt. "I got mad when you couldn't come to me with something like that, Ron. I thought we were okay, and it made me mad to think that you didn't think we were okay."

"Is there a 'but' coming up anytime soon?"

"But…" Kim said forcefully, giving him an annoyed look. Her annoyance melted quickly, becoming quiet embarrassment. "Then I stopped to wonder if we really _were_ okay. And I don't think we are, Ron."

Ron stopped cold. The towel dropped from his hand, forgotten. "Whoa, KP. Hold on. I don't—"

Kim waved him quiet and shook her head. "Ron, I don't know what I'm doing with you." At Ron's crushed expression, she gaped, and quickly amended, "I mean, I don't know how to act around you anymore. Now that we're dating."

"What's the big? We're just hanging out, and doing what we always do."

"Exactly," Kim insisted, earning her another confused look. "Outside of an occasional kiss, we're acting like we're still just best friends. And that's fine for the beginning, while we're still getting used to the idea. But it's been a month, and we haven't even been out on a date yet. We haven't done _anything_ besides hang out. I think that's why you're worried, Ron. And that's my fault, too."

Confusion spread from Ron's face into the very core of his brain. The complex emotional concepts Kim described sounded foreign, even alien. He had been worried that Kim would get bored of him, or that she was already bored of him, and was just sticking around because she didn't want to hurt him. This sounded much more complicated. He did like the part where he wasn't fully culpable, though. "Your fault?" he asked with a tinge of hope.

Kim plucked a fresh towel from the holder next to the sink. She strutted up to Ron in her high heels, this time without slink in her step. "I gave you your other shoe," she explained, helping to clear the mess covering Ron, "to show you that there is no other shoe. You aren't a rebound. You aren't some placeholder. I'm not waiting for the better deal to come along. You're my best friend 'and' my boyfriend. My BF-squared. I just haven't been very good at indulging in the 'boyfriend' part of that." Kim smiled at him, and took his hands in hers.

The confusion lingered. "So, what? What does that mean?"

"It means that you need to learn to trust me, girlfriend-wise. And that I need to learn how to show you that you can trust me, girlfriend-wise. And," she added, pausing for an uncertain sigh, "it means that we both need to learn how to take chances."

Ron nodded. Then he said, "I have no idea what you mean."

Kim placed his hands on her bare hips again with care. His gentle touch made her shiver as she looped her arms around his neck, heedless of the mess she'd made on him. The torturous heels she wore made her as tall as Ron. Faces even, she rested her forehead on his. "We both took a huge chance with where we are now, Ron. Now let's take other chances. Touch me."

Taking his hands again, he slid them up her sides, bunching the fabric of her blouse until he reached her ribs. Then she took Ron by the face and forced him not to look away in embarrassment.

"Bring me flowers," she told him. "Write me a cheesy poem or a love note. Tell me I have eyes like the stars. Get fresh. Get frisky, even. Show me what you want from me. Do all the things you've ever wanted to do with a girlfriend, and trust that I'll let you know if I think we're moving too fast." With a wry look, she added, "We need to be moving at all before that can happen."

"Kim, I…I have no idea what to say. I don't… I mean, of course I want you. How could I not want you? Anybody would—"

"You've got me," she told him. Ron lapsed into silence, clearly overwhelmed. With depthless patience, Kim took his hands once more, moving them this time to the small of her back. Her face remained encouraging as she said, "That thing you were going to try before? Do it."

"Um…"

"It's okay, Ron."

Ron looked left and right as though he were about to cross the street. Then he locked his eyes into Kim's steadfast gaze, waiting for her loving expression to break for a "Gotcha!" grin. When she lifted an eyebrow expectantly, he swallowed hard, and let his hand drift down. His other hand followed suit, traversing the athletic curve of Kim's miniskirt. Ron swallowed again, cupping Kim's curve, and tried to smile.

Kim helped his smile with one of her own. "See? Just a butt."

"A nice butt."

She eyed him. "A spectacular butt."

Ron relaxed with a laugh, and found the courage to let each of his hands squeeze. Kim squealed and jumped into him, laughing as well. Her lips found his, and the nervous pair shared a short, passionate kiss, spurred by Ron's leverage over Kim. When it ended, her lips and chest pulled away from his. Their hips remained joined by his clammy grasp.

"So," said Ron. "Chances, huh? Can I—"

"No."

Ron looked a little disappointed. "You didn't even know what I was going to ask."

Kim's face transitioned from peach to ruby red with the blush she had been fighting for the past minute. It had been a hard battle, and she felt no shame in losing now; she had accomplished what she'd set out to do. "I know," she said. "But where your hands are now was a big step for me, too, and I think anything more is going to put me back into drama mode."

"You want me to move my hands before my little sister walks in on us?" he asked.

"Please and thank you."

Kim practically melted with gratitude as Ron slid away with gentlemanly speed. But she felt a sharp and thrilling pang of disappointment at the absence of his touch. When they had a moment and a place that had no threat of interruption (or the gaping mole rat still on the counter), she fully intended to see just how far she could push Ron, and just how far he could push back.

Her heart hammered and her stomach fluttered at the thought. She leaned forward and took another kiss from Ron for no other reason than her own desire. "I love you, Ron."

"Love you, KP." Ron grinned and took a kiss of his own. Then, looking down at himself, he shook his head and lifted his feet. Mashed salad waited wherever he looked. "Seriously, though, you should find a teaching method that doesn't involve tossing the salad."

"Sorry," Kim said, chagrinned. She crossed the kitchen and reached for the paper towels by the sink.

Ron shrugged. "Nah, s'okay. And hey, at least we got our seasonal drama out of the way early, right?"

Barking a laugh, Kim looked out the window over the sink. A whole summer of possibility waited for her on the other side of the glass, warm and long and without any distractions to keep her from this new adventure. "What on earth are we going to do to fill the drama void?" she joked.

That window Kim gazed out of darkened and exploded inward in two instants. Kim flinched reflexively, ducking out of the way of a living shadow that burst in through the hail of razor glass. Sharp shrapnel peppered her arms as they covered her face. She heard Ron shout, and stood again with fists already curled and eyes narrowed.

Yori stood in the kitchen on broken glass and crushed salad. Her face was a mask, her body, statuary, unyielding. A silvery katana extended from her hand all the way to Ron's neck, where it puckered the soft skin of his throat. Ron leaned back against the island counter with nowhere to go. Yori said nothing. She offered no explanation for the attack, and gazed impassively at Ron as though he were a stranger.

"Well, that solves the drama shortage," Ron squeaked.

**To Be Continued**

* * *

Once again, my gratitude to Isamu for the beta read. Y'all can thank him for keeping the drama to a minimum in this chapter. Personally, I'll never forgive him for it. "Constructive criticism" my fanny… 


	3. A Line, Crossed

"Yori? There are better ways to say hello. Ways that don't involve cutlery. And would a call that you were coming have been too much to ask?"

Ron swallowed hard as his jest failed to crack the countenance of his onetime ally, the Japanese beauty clad in form-fitting robes. The lump in his throat pressed against the tip of her blade, pricking a drop of blood that ran down to his collarbone. Time stood still, and so did he, as Yori held him at bay with her katana.

"Do not move, Possible-san," Yori instructed Kim without taking her eyes off Ron's fading pallor. "Do not sully my unenviable task with another death. It would be most regrettable."

Beads of sweat budded on Ron's brow. He had trained with Yori for the better part of a summer. They had fought countless times in practice. In a fair fight, Ron fancied himself a potential match for the career ninja. But circumstances being what they were, with the tip of her blade already kissing his throat, he knew she had him cold. Even if Kim did try to save him, he'd be dead before she could shift her weight from one foot to the other. "Yori, nobody wants to sully or regret anything. Why not put the big honkin' sword down and stay for dinner? You can tell me why you want to kill me over a big slice of pot loaf."

Rufus jumped up and down on the counter, babbling and waving his claws. He could hardly hold his shape for all his worry. Ripples ran though his outline as he squawked, "No!"

The blade crept deeper into Ron's flesh, drawing a steady trickle from the scratch. The cold indifference of her face made him wince more than her sword did. "Cease your American-style bravado, Stoppable-san. You know why I am here."

"I really don't," he said.

"You do."

"Nope."

"You do," she insisted.

Ron's expression cracked as her blade severed another micron of skin. "I don't!" he exclaimed. "I totally don't! Whatever it is I did, or didn't do, or haven't done enough, I promise you that from now on I'll never or immediately or always do again right away! Now will you please tell me why you flew a half a globe to cut me a new air hole?"

Kim's hand rested on Yori's stiffening shoulder. "I think that's enough, Yori. You can drop the sword," she said easily.

Without budging her blade, Yori threw Kim's grasp off and twisted, glaring at the redhead. "Remove yourself from this, Possible-san," she said.

"KP," hissed Ron, "Don't oke-pay the inja-nay."

"Ho, careful!" Rufus chattered.

Yori bristled at Kim's calm. "I am serious," she insisted. "I have a sacred duty to perform."

Kim leaned back against the counter with folded arms. Boredom sank into her expression. "Okay, then. Sorry to interrupt. My arm hurts, so I'm going to go get my sling, okay?" she said with a nod to her purse. Then she added, "By the way, his jugular vein's about a quarter inch to the left."

"I know where his jugular is!" Yori snapped.

Kim planted her purse on the counter, rifling through it with her good hand. To Ron and Yori's astonishment, she acted as though nothing were more important than finding her sling, standoff or no. Her off arm still twinged with every movement, just as the plethora of specialists her mother had sent her to had warned her. She hated immobility of any kind, and when she had gotten her cast off for the hyperextension, her impatience had viewed it as a premature release, and not the next stage of her recovery, like her doctors kept insisting.

"Touchy. Just trying to help," Kim said offhandedly.

"Leave now!" commanded Yori. She turned back to her frozen prey. "Or witness the death of your beloved."

Sweat poured into Ron's eyes, making him blink. He flicked his faltering gaze between the two women in growing fear. "Kim, do you think you could treat the sitch with just a bit more seriousness? Or at least get something to clean up the gallons of Ron that are about to hit the floor?"

A smirk broke Kim's boredom. "And miss Yori backing down? As if." She looped her neck and arm into the sling.

Tense seconds trickled by. None of the teens moved. No one spoke. Ron began composing his last will and testament in his head, wondering at the same time how much of it he could blurt out before Yori filled his throat with steel. He had just reached Section Two, Subsection One, "Bequeathing of Hairless Rodents to Bratty Sisters," when a clattering of metal called his eyes open.

Yori stood before him, empty-handed, her shoulders slumped. Waves of shimmering obsidian cascaded over her face as she hung her head. Tears rimmed her eyes and cut her cheeks. "How did you know, Possible-san?" she asked in a hush.

Paper towels in hand, Kim pressed a folded square into Ron's hand and guided it to his neck. Ron was too shocked by the sudden arrival and failure of his assassin to move on his own. Rufus crawled up Ron's sleeve and to his neck to place pressure on the wound. "Two easy reasons," said Kim. "First off, if you were trying to kill Ron, you wouldn't have broken in for speeches and standoffs. His head would be on the floor."

Glaring down at the droplets of blood staining the linoleum, Ron grumbled, "I think there's enough of it there already, thanks."

"And second," said Kim, with a pointed glance split between them, "if Yamanouchi wanted Ron dead, they wouldn't have sent the one person in that whole school who's in love with him."

Yori's golden face flushed rose.

"You were testing him," she stated. "Why? And keep in mind," Kim said, her humor waning quickly, "that as smug as I am about seeing through you like wet rice paper, I'm also majorly tweaked that you put a sword into my boyfriend's neck." She folded her arms and lowered her brow.

As fearsome as she had been a moment ago, Yori was now humbled and meek. Her eyes cleared with a callous sweep of her hand as she bent to collect her blade. "I must beg forgiveness of you both. You are correct, Kimberly-san. Sensei's intentions were never that Ron-san die immediately," said Yori.

Ron swallowed nervously again, setting his superficial wound ablaze. "The way you worded that means Sensei might want me dead at a later, yet-unspecified date," he said.

A shiver ran through Yori, drawing her arms around her chest. She closed her eyes and tried to banish the unwelcome memory. It haunted her still, as it had since the moment she had awoken from meditation. "Days ago, I received a vision of the future. Our Chosen One would be the epicenter of a tragedy whose magnitude could reshape our entire existence."

Her cold and sorrowful tone tilted Ron's head. "Reshaping tragedy," he echoed. "So, something heinously bad, then?"

Rufus groaned.

"Grief. Pain. Sorrow." Yori's tears returned and redoubled as she bowed her head. "Loss the likes of which I have never felt. The whole world will feel it if this comes to pass." She looked up. Grim resolve shone behind her tears. "I begged Sensei for the chance to prevent this tragedy. I prayed that I was not too late to spare you from it, for I knew that if I was…"

Ron grimaced as Rufus pressed harder into the stemming trickle of blood. "Snick, snick," he said, and shared a glance with his little buddy.

Yori nodded, shamed. "I cannot allow you to threaten existence itself, Ron-san. But I will do everything in my power to see that it does not come to pass."

Every last iota of bitterness and betrayal vanished from Ron. It was a testimony to the purity of his spirit, how quickly he embraced his would-be killer and cradled her while she dried her eyes on his shoulder. Even Rufus forgave her at once, stroking her hair with his claws from his perch on Ron's shoulder.

Yori felt old feelings surface and surge at the soft sound of his voice. "I don't plan on ending the world anytime soon, Yo-chan. Whatever's going on, we'll figure it out."

A pair of hands wormed into their hug and pried a healthy amount of space between them. Kim inserted herself into that space. "Yes, _we_ will," she said through a too-wide smile. "Did you happen to get any details in this 'vision' of yours? Something other than my boyfriend being a walking apocalypse? 'Cause details would help us save my boyfriend."

Pint-sized yawning turned the trio toward the door. They found Hana at the cusp of the kitchen, dragging a Fearless Ferret blanket behind her. She rubbed her eye and stretched. "Wha's goin' on? An' who's that?" she asked sleepily, and pointed at Yori.

The young ninja lost all sense and eloquence in the face of her tiny inquisitor. "I… I am… You are…"

Ron hoped his sharp-eyed little sister wouldn't notice the prick in his neck as he scooped her up and set her on the counter. "Hana, this is a friend of mine from Japan. Her name is Yori."

"This is Yori?" Hana murmured. She rubbed the last of the drowsiness from her eyes to give the nervous teen a thorough examination. "She is pretty, like you said," she decided at last. "But I'm not sure why you think her butt is so great. Just looks like a butt to me."

"Ha!" Ron laughed under Kim's silent glare with the knowledge that he would have serious groveling to do in the future, provided Yori didn't run him through to avert some apocalypse. "Kids and their bizarre lies." He rubbed Hana's hair into a mess and said, "Now be warned, Intruder. I told Yori all about you, so she probably thinks you're a pain just like I do."

Hana finger-combed her hair back into a lustrous waterfall. "You're just peeved because everybody likes me better than you. Even Mom and Dad love me better," she reminded him teasingly.

"Only because they worked out all their mistakes on their first kid," razzed Ron.

As Ron and Hana launched into their ancient battle of wits, Kim examined Yori with fading ire. The young beauty, so full of grace and elegance in every instance Kim could recall, seemed at a loss. Yori just stared at Hana as the siblings bickered. Her gape reignited Kim's curiosity. "Yori, how long do you plan on 'helping' Ron?" asked Kim.

"I…" Yori faltered, stammered, and then shook her head clear. "Indefinitely," she said. "Until I am convinced that the danger has passed."

"Spankin'," muttered Kim.

With strengthening voice, Yori said, "I only arrived today. I have been following Ron-san for several hours now."

Having been defeated by his younger sister in verbal fisticuffs, Ron sighed, and scratched his head. "I thought something was up," he said. "I've had this stupid tickle in my head all afternoon. I must've caught wind of you with my innie eye, or whatever it is you tried to teach me to see with." Even now, the tingle in his head defied his scratching fingers. Rufus scampered across his shoulder blades and tried helping with his claws, but nothing could quell the tingle.

Yori blinked. "Your inner eye senses danger?"

Even now, the tingle worsened, becoming all but unbearable. "Yeah." Ron grunted, and Rufus scratched harder. Both of them leaned to and fro, with tongue stuck between teeth in effort. "Do they make a ninja cream for this? It's driving me bonkers."

Yori looked away, frowning. Never mind that Ron had never achieved the stillness or concentration necessary to open his inner eye to impending threats. The warning he described was a fundamental technique of Yamanouchi's advanced counter-stealth, one that was useful in detecting amateur threats, but one that was easily evaded by the knowledgeable ninja. Yori had been taught several methods of cloaking her ki so as to remain undetectable to the inner eye, and did so out of habit on missions such as this. Ron could not have detected her approach even if he had full command of his extrasensory faculties, which he clearly did not.

"You sense an impending threat," Yori repeated, her voice dropping with concern. "You believe this threat to be me?"

Ron grimaced at the tingle's crescendo. Growling, he grabbed Rufus bodily and raked the mole rat's claws across the back of his scalp. "I don't see anyone else waving swords at me today," he said.

A sharp crack came from the entryway, the sound of splintering wood bursting inward. Boot steps followed a heartbeat later, filling the house with the oppressive drum of clockwork soldiering. In an instant, the space outside the kitchen door became an impending war zone. A dozen men, with rifles ready to rob the house of its peace, layered themselves in the kitchen doorway. Their featureless black armor and helmets left nothing for the teens to question or discern. Faceless military precision walled them in the kitchen without any promise of mercy or hope.

"Oh. Okay," Ron drawled.

He drew Rufus from the back of his skull, relieved. Rufus spat up strands of blond hair and gave Ron a glare before staring at the line of soldiers. The mole rat drooped in Ron's hand, his head darting between the soldiers and his friends. "Hrrmmmm, uh-oh," he squeaked.

The lead soldier split his face into a snarl. The black visor over his eyes tilted in a glare. "On the floor, now! Hands behind your heads! This is your only warning!"

Kim and Ron shared a look.

* * *

Cameron Du lowered his scan binoculars with a smile and savored the taste of justice. The flavorful scene of Team Possible's capture went on behind the walls of the Stoppable house without him. He could have watched his agents apprehend the children play-by-play through the million dollar binoculars, but he wanted to see them dragged out in cuffs with his naked eye. 

The street was empty, save for a handful of parked cars. Du stood in full gear with Doctor Director on the curb opposite the house. Their remaining agents were either poised behind the commanding duo or spread hidden in a perimeter to keep civilians from wandering into the threat zone. The entire block had been evacuated, houses emptied quietly and forcefully, leaving Global Justice in full control of the situation.

"There, now," he said to Doctor Director. "Was that so bad?"

Doctor Director didn't share the pride on Du's face. "Give it a second," she said.

Du's brow rose. "Are you serious? That's a shade over half our forces in there with guns already on Possible, Stoppable, and one of their little college friends. It's over."

She shook her head.

Another retort rose to Du's lips when his earpiece exploded with shouting.

_"Stand d—ugh!"_

_"Tangos hostile! Engage! Engage!"_

_"Is that a—"_

_"Sword! Watch—"_

_"Augh!"_

_"Man down! Regroup and—!"_

The chatter of plasma fire echoed from the house. White-hot light flashed in the windows. Du slammed his eyes into his scan binos and flicked them on, penetrating the house with an all-seeing thermal eye. It was chaos inside, with heat signatures literally bouncing off the walls into more heat signatures that were staggered throughout the living room. Lumps of body heat lay on the floor, unmoving.

_"Regroup! Regroup!"_

_"He's flipping everywhere, I can't—AUGH!"_

"Second wave, on me! Perimeter, pull back and prepare to mobilize with the Director," Du bellowed. He shot Doctor Director a venomous glare before lowering the helmet visor over his eyes. His look went unchallenged. Grasping his rifle, he charged across the street with six of his finest behind him. "Seven friendlies inbound, front door," he barked into his mic. "Tangos are now Class Alpha hostiles. Engage at will."

He slid through the front door and into pandemonium. The formerly immaculate living room lay in shambles, with furniture upended, curtains torn down, pictures flung and shattered, plasma burns blackening the walls, and broken knickknacks carpeting the floor. GJ's best of the best, the finest agents from Doctor Director's tactical division, laid in heaps in the floor, clutching body parts or moaning expletives.

Red rage flooded Du's vision. He grinded his teeth and pushed the rage down into his stomach, where it bubbled and boiled. Anger wouldn't help him find his targets, particularly with no sign of them anywhere in the house. As his men entered, he directed them with silent gestures, spreading them throughout the living room. Two of them started up the stairs, while the remaining four split themselves to search the first floor.

Du checked each downed man through their body armor's sensors. Healthy, semi-conscious vital signs peeped and pulsed in the display reflected in Du's visor. A broken rib here, blunt trauma there, and more than a few nasty superficial slices made him reconsider Doctor Director's warning. How did a few children do this kind of damage to trained soldiers? It was impossible!

"Commander!"

The shout called Du to the front hall closet. There, an agent stood by its open door, his rifle lowered and stance relaxed. A quivering lump sat in the closet amidst a pile of winter boots, with a Fearless Ferret blanket shielding all but her luminous amber eyes. Between the cowering little girl and Du's surprise crouched a small, pink, growling rodent.

"It's the youngest Stoppable, sir," his agent reported. "We found the naked weasel thing with her. I think—"

As the agent reached down to help the girl out, the rat's growl became a snarl. The mole rat sprang up, spreading in mid-flight into a wave of pink that filled the agent's vision. The agent dropped his rifle with a muffled scream and clutched at the pink that clung to him. Rufus engulfed him from brow to chin and held on ferociously as the man stumbled back into the wall.

Du stared, horrified, at his man stretching the freakish rodent in vain. Before he could step in to help, Du heard another shout, and then another, as two more men tumbled down the stairs ahead of a ghostly black blur. That blur landed atop his men, driving the breath out of them, and coalesced into a young girl his son's age with shimmering short hair and a katana flashing in her hands. Her blade cleaved the tops off their rifles in their laps as she narrowed her almond eyes on Du with a hunter's fury.

His rifle trailed a buildup of plasma at the girl as a shout formed on his lips. Neither his rifle nor his shout was ready for the foot that landed in the small of his back, flinging him hard into the frame of the closet door. The little girl screamed and fled as Du bounced into the row of coats in the closet.

When he'd regained his footing, he turned to find Ron standing behind him, holding Du's rifle like it was a dead skunk. The little girl cowered behind Ron's leg as he tossed the rifle aside and said, "Dude, you picked the wrong dinner to crash. If you want to feel like somebody beat the crap out of you, go eat at Arby's."

Three rifles leveled with the back of Ron's head, powering up with the distinctive whine of impending plasma. Du smiled as the boy stiffened. Though smart enough not to move, the Stoppable boy did pull his little sister in front of him to shield her from stray shots. "You've got three crack shots a good two meters behind you with hair triggers, boy," Du told him. "Let's see you flip your way out of this one."

"I don't respond well to threats, bullies, or metrics," Ron said coldly.

A curtain rod descended from around the corner and cracked down on all three rifles. Plasma bolts chewed through the hardwood floor as the agents staggered. Their attacker soared around the corner, flying a banner of vibrant red, her improvised staff whirling into a blur in her one good hand. She cracked two agents with the rod before her feet touched the floor, and then belted the third agent with the rod's broken remains. When she turned to Du with a smile, readjusting the sling for her bad arm, the last of his agents crumpled into unconsciousness. Her martial acrobatics made her tug the scrap of a skirt lower over her thighs in self-consciousness.

Ron shook his head and tsk'ed. "One-handed. It has got to be embarrassing to be not-us right now. Is that all of them?" asked Ron.

"Think so. Good job on the Number One Classic, by the way." She clasped Ron's shoulder and gave him a friendly look. All that friendliness vanished when her eyes trailed to Du. "That one was shouting orders in the second group."

Steel glinted in the corner of Du's vision as the girl from the stairs descended and boxed him in. "Then he shall be a prime candidate for inquiry," Yori said with a meaningful flick of her katana.

Still clutching Ron's leg, Hana pulled her eyelid down and stuck out her tongue. Rufus, fresh from his victory over a now-slumbering agent, hopped atop her head and did the same. "Meanie!" spat Hana.

"Hah, meanie!" Rufus agreed.

Du's hand flew to his helmet. "All units, mobilize_—_"

He had read her file ten times. He had studied tapes of her career, including every natural disaster rescue she'd aided in and every Alpha threat she'd neutralized. He had spent twenty years training, studying, spying, fighting, and generally being one of the senior members of the world's most elite combat organizations. And he had never seen anyone move as fast as Kim Possible.

She kicked the small table sitting in the hall, one of the lucky few pieces of furniture still intact on that floor. The table's knickknacks went flying, scattering family portraits and decorative pinecones into the air. Kim snatched a collector's plate in midair and spun, releasing it like a discus to land edge-first on the bridge of Du's nose. Du staggered as both the plate and his nose broke with opposing cracks of ceramic and cartilage.

A kick form Yori swept the legs out from under Du. A second kick drove the breath from his chest and left him gasping on the ground. "More will come," Yori said to her friends, her features grim as she looked down at the littler Stoppable clinging to Ron's leg.

"Back door," Kim said. She turned toward the kitchen, her mind ablaze with tactics and plans. Staying to fight ranked low on her list of ideas. "We get out and run. Yori, you—"

Empty floor waited for Kim's question. The ninja had vanished in the scant seconds Kim's back had been turned. And she had not left empty-handed.

"Hana?" Ron looked down with a sinking feeling, and found nothing where his little sister and mole rat had been. He hadn't even felt Hana pulling away, only her absence. Panicked, Ron turned, exploring every corner of the room with wide eyes. "Hana!"

Kim grabbed his arm and tugged him toward the kitchen. "Ron, we have to go. Yori must have grabbed Hana."

"But why?"

The almost-sob tore at Kim's heart. She could only imagine what Ron felt, and prayed that her brothers never gave her the opportunity to find out. "I don't know," she said. "But it won't matter if we get caught by whatever goon squad is—"

Gunmetal canisters bounced through the empty front door. They began vomiting foul smoke at once, filling the room with corrosive air that burned every part of the teens it touched. Kim coughed and drew her blouse over her nose, then used her good arm to drag Ron ahead of the smoke and into the kitchen. More boot steps pounded into the smoke as they reached the door. Kim threw it open. Then she dug her heels in before she collided with the body on the other side of the door.

"Kim!" Monique cried, backing up with a step. She carried a small white container against her hip with her one hand. Her other hand waved from the end of its angled cast. "Why all the ruckus? I—"

A flash of light burned between Kim and Ron and struck Monique in the chest. She jerked with the impact and froze, gasping as her clothes, then skin, then flesh boiled away in a tight circle of char. Her blouse trailed smoke as she fell to her knees.

Kim gaped at Monique. She whirled around. The agent she'd hit with the plate leaned heavily in the kitchen door with a rifle dangling from his grasp. Smoky tears streamed from his scowl. A half dozen masked and visor'd troops poured into the gap behind him.

She didn't care what the soldiers did. Kim lunged forward and caught Monique by one shoulder. Ron was already on the other side of her, easing her to the ground. "Monique!" Kim cried. "Mon, don't… Just hold on!"

Her pleas fell on deaf ears. Monique's confused expression paled at an alarming rate. Blood bubbled over her lips as she choked, "I brought…I brought a fruit salad…"

* * *

He walked into the shop with a ball cap pulled low over his brow and a heavy jacket that had no business being worn in the middle of summer. The door jangled open. The smell of coffee brushed over him. Inside, empty tables and booths loitered in a comfortable interior filled with soothing music and landscape paintings on the walls. He found himself humming along with the music, a little ditty he had never heard, as he approached the counter. 

A lone woman manned the industrial espresso maker. She was hardly out of her teens, and wore a mottled green smock and a swishing blonde ponytail. Her eyes lit up at the new customer. She wiped her hands clean with a stray rag and sang, "Hey there! Welcome to Perk-U-Late, the nonstop coffee shop with pop and slop! How can I perk you today?"

His freckles stretched with a smile. "Hi," he said warmly. "Listen, I don't want to make any waves. If you could just step aside, nobody needs to get rowdy."

The woman gave him a puzzled grin. "Sorry, sir, but I'm not really sure I understand! Can I make any recommendations from our 'Cold and Perky' menu? It's awfully hot outside!"

"No, thank you," he said. "I just need to get at the entrance."

"But you just came through the entrance, sir!" she said. In an even squeakier voice, she added, "And now you're in the perkiest place in Middleton! So how about a cup of coffee? Can't go wrong with a classic!"

He leaned over the counter, matching her smile. The same feeling that Shego stirred in him fluttered about his chest at the sight of her dimples. "Okay, there's a chance that you don't actually know. I didn't count on that. So just to clarify, I'm talking about the secret door behind that gigantic coffee machine, which leads down into a top secret Global Justice facility designed to contain all the confiscated Class Alpha equipment. What I'm going to do is walk behind the counter and open that secret door. I'd like to do that without hurting you, because I think you're cute and your shape pleases me. Does that sound okay?"

The woman tittered. "I guess so, sir," she said.

She kicked a large rifle up from under the counter and caught it one-handed. The movement was so smooth, he never saw it coming. Her finger slipped into the trigger as she slid the rifle's lever back, setting its wide mouth ablaze with blistering plasma. The barrel didn't waver as she held it inches from his smiling face.

Her voice still sweet, the woman said, "But first I'll need you to lie facedown on the floor with your hands on your head, or I'll vaporize everything between those pretty eyes of yours." Without moving her weapon, she dipped her chin to the lapel of her smock. "Control, this is Knob. We have—"

He darted fast, dodging the bolt of plasma she sent at him on reflex. Twisting, he shuffled forward and grasped the burning barrel of her rifle. A powerful jerk slammed the butt of the rifle into her nose. She stumbled back with blood streaming from her face, and then doubled over around his foot as he leapt over the counter. Her skull knocked against the back counter. Her eyes rolled closed. She slumped onto the floor next to her discarded weapon.

Gentle hands slid her aside and folded a rag on which for her head to rest. "Sorry," he said. "You really are cute. I'm not sure about 'Knob,' though."

The warm steam nozzle of the espresso machine throbbed against his burned hand as he yanked it up. Steam whistled from the nozzle while the entire wall, machine and all, slid back and aside to reveal a long, dimly lit stairway leading down. He gave the woman one last glance before plunging into the depths of his enemy's stronghold.

Hurried steps became a full sprint, and then a jump that cleared the end of the stairs. He dropped into a slide, shivering at the intense heat of plasma bolts streaking over his head. Two guards crouched at the end of a long, featureless corridor, rifles readied to send more plasma his way. Behind those two, another, more obvious door waited, a vault door the likes of which scoffed at the thought of forced entry.

He whipped his heavy coat open, revealing an armored vest beneath. Two grenades clicked off his belt in a quick yank, leaving their pins dangling on their clips. He lobbed the grenades high and hard. They bounced off the walls until they reached the far end of the corridor. Halfway there, the grenades began to cough up clouds of oily smoke. The gas mask he pulled from his belt would keep his eyes clear. The guards at the end wouldn't be so lucky.

Twenty-six steps down the hall. He'd measured its length before condemning the corridor to smoke. He ducked and weaved through the guards' blind fire. At the twentieth step, he leapt over an errant plasma bolt and lashed out at the roiling cloud, and struck one guard's chin. As he shoved the man's head into the corridor wall with his boot, he kicked out behind him, sinking his other boot into a solid patch in the smoke. Seconds later, the heavy smoke settled onto the floor, revealing two unconscious guards.

Alone, and with precious seconds to spare, he took to the door. He produced and pressed a code matrix onto the vault's keypad. The tiny box hummed a trillion numbers at the door until it found the right combination and turned the door's red lights green. A rough mechanical symphony rattled the door before it swung forward. Smiling, he stepped around the door and into the next chamber.

Two dozen guards waited in the larger chamber, standing between him and his true goal: a smaller, heavier vault door on the far wall marked with a plaque that read "LIPSKY-04." Two dozen rifles lit at the sight of him. Four dozen eyes narrowed upon his smile.

"You will stand down!" the foremost guard barked. "Resistance will be met with deadly force."

"How'd he get this far?" another guard exclaimed. "It's not possible!"

His smile turned sly as he raised his hands and pictured the ensuing fight in his head. If things played out as he imagined they would, he would hate to be a GJ agent in the next few moments. "Not in the strictest sense, no," he said.

Then he leapt into the fray.

* * *

Kim watched helplessly while her friend died in her arm. The waxy pallor of Monique's skin grew worse with each of her struggled breaths. There wasn't anything in Kim's extensive knowledge of first aid that covered a penetrating burn from a sliver of white-hot energy. And considering how many types of energy she'd been shot with over the years, Kim thought that she _should_ know how to treat it. Plasma burns should have been old stuff, no big, she screamed in her head. But there she knelt, without a single idea and a stomach lurching with fear. 

"Secure the prisoners," the lead soldier commanded, wiping the gassed tears from his eyes. The motion bumped his broken nose, making him wince. "And call a Med Evac for—"

The first soldiers to reach their "prisoners" met with Kim's lightning feet. She went from crouching to airborne in no time, crushing their visors with kicks that flipped her back into a fighting stance. She landed and dashed, pulling a taser from one of the collapsing agents' belts to shove into the neck of a third while a fourth agent wrapped around her kick. Her bad arm bobbed in its sling while her good arm flew too fast to be seen, following her feet in a mad flurry that sent fresh and risen agents flying.

A familiar voice parted the agents' abortive capture. "Stand down! For God's sake, stand down!" One of the smaller agents pushed through and pulled her head free of its helmet, revealing a cyclopean scowl that cowed hero and agent alike. Ignoring everyone, she rushed to Monique and knelt at her side, examining the burn with hurried care.

Kim stared, aghast. "Doctor Director?" she cried.

"Did any of you idiots think to tell her who you were with?" snapped Doctor Director. "They might have come peacefully!"

She tore Monique's blouse open in a spray of buttons. That same circular burn lay beneath, high on the girl's left breast with an ugly ring of purple growing around it. Monique gurgled a gasp as Doctor Director touched the wound. More blood trickled from the corners of the girl's mouth with each labored breath.

"Got the lung," said Doctor Director. "May have nicked the heart. We don't have long." She touched her ear and bellowed, "Where the hell is that Med Evac?"

Kim pulled her Kimmunicator, intent on calling for more help, but the lead soldier slapped it from her hand. His boot crushed the device while his hands drew a pistol from his armor vest. "Don't move," he snarled.

Glacial rage frosted Kim's voice as she stared down the barrel of his gun. "Get out of my way," she told him.

"You're hereby in the custody of Global Justice," he retorted. "As of now, your options and your civil rights just dried up. Now, surrender, and we might save your little friend."

"That's enough!" Doctor Director roared at him. She had removed a kit from her belt in hopes that a battlefield stimulant would keep Monique's heart going long enough to reach real treatment. As she prepped the syringe, she noticed Ron's hand drifting toward the wound. "Stoppable, don't touch her. You'll make it worse."

Ron never heard any of the squabbling or shouting. Since Monique had been shot, he had just stared at her, wondering why it had been her to be shot. Monique hadn't even been part of the fight. She had just wanted to spend the evening trading her charm and company for a free meal with friends. She didn't deserve to be shot. Why had she been shot? It was just stupid. He should have been the one on the ground with a hole in his chest. He should have done something more. He should have protected them better.

Doctor Director reached to keep Ron back when his hand flared with brilliant energy the color of blood. She recoiled as he rested the glow upon the girl's breast. His face relaxed, and his eyes glazed and burned with the same red energy. The air around them tingled like a sleeping limb as the glow grew into a crescendo of blinding light.

The world turned red for a single heartbeat.

A gagging sound pulled Ron out of his own thoughts. He blinked, and looked down to Monique's chest, which shook with coughs—choking coughs, not the ragged half-breaths of before—as Monique freed her throat of the last of its blood. Her coughing turned into sobbing as she curled on her side around the phantom wound, which was now a mote of pink skin upon her breast. She cried in shock. She cried at the memory of pain. But she was alive and breathing.

The shock was not Monique's alone. Doctor Director gawked at Ron, staring at his hand as though it might flare again at any moment. "What in God's name was that, Stoppable?" she asked in a whisper.

Silence roared on the Stoppable's back doorstep. The gung-ho squad of soldiers stared at the wiry blond teen. Kim stared as well, her awe tempered with more than a little trepidation. "Oh, Ron," she murmured.

Ron never got the chance to answer. As he looked up at Kim, the lead agent stepped to block him. The man's rifle butt slammed into the side of Ron's head. Ron saw stars. Then he saw nothing.

* * *

Ron woke to the cramped interior of a truck and an unholy pain trying to drill its way out of the side of his head. A hard bench bounced and lurched beneath him, adding nausea to his growing list of problems. He formulated an eloquent inquiry regarding the change in scenery. His careful words emerged as, "Wha hapen t' n' suldurz'n gzs? Zana kay?" 

As his bleary eyes returned to focus, they homed in on a patch of red in the van that steadily became Kim. She and Monique sat on a bench opposite his, clapped in cuffs. Kim's hurt arm had been dragged from its sling to be bound to her good arm. Now the sling bounced around her neck, empty. She sat ramrod straight, wearing a look of contempt.

Monique had escaped handcuffs thanks to her cast, but she had nothing even resembling fight left in her. She hunched over with an expression of miserable fear. Her torn shirt hung open, revealing the stuttering shake of her chest as she cried silently. Tears dripped from her chin to the pinkish scar near the edge of her bra.

Doctor Director sat at the head of the girls' bench. The sympathy she offered Ron looked odd coming from within her combat helmet. "Are you all right, Stoppable?" she asked.

"He's fine," a gruff voice snapped from beside Ron. The burly agent in charge loomed next to Ron, easily topping the teen by a head. His nose was raw red and his face was angry. Sweat plastered his dark hair to his forehead. "Now that they're awake, we can finish this farce of a mission."

Kim choked down on an intense desire to fill Du's face with her high heel. Her legs were chained to the bench at any rate, but she almost tried it anyway. Instead, she turned to Doctor Director. "What is it you think we stole?" she demanded, blinking back enraged tears. "What could possibly justify you treating us like this? After everything we've been through?"

A sorrowful face met Kim's choked rage. "Yesterday, one of our facilities in Idaho was breached, and Demens's Entropy Cannon was taken. Our cameras caught you and Stoppable at the scene," Doctor Director explained.

"And since you failed to fill out the proper requisition forms, we need to bring you in for a friendly chat," said Du.

"Cam…" said Doctor Director. She looked down the bench, past Kim's scowl, to where Monique sat. "We can get them cleaned up before we get into this. The girl was shot. She needs to be—"

Du stepped all over her concern. "You are being charged with assault of federal agents, illegal entry of a government facility, grand larceny of volatile and classified technology…" His glare hammered Ron. "I hope you enjoyed the sunset, because it's the last daylight you'll ever see."

Ron gaped at the burly agent. "I'm sorry, could you go back to the part where we're entering, assaulting larceners?"

"We've been set up, Ron," snapped Kim. The words curled her face into deeper anger. "Global Justice is playing right into someone else's hands, and we're taking the fall."

"Cameras don't lie, little girl," snapped Du.

"They do if we aren't guilty," Kim snapped back.

Doctor Director placed her hands between the pair as they leaned dangerously close to one another. "There'll be a full investigation to ascertain guilt," she assured Kim, easing the girl back in her seat. "In the meantime, I'm afraid you'll have to remain in our custody until we've sorted this out."

The senior agent's hand failed to placate Du. "Where's the Cannon?" he demanded. "What are you planning? Whom did you steal it for?"

"We didn't take it!" shouted Kim.

Where Doctor Director failed, Ron succeeded. He snapped his fingers until both glares leveled on him, and said, "Hi. Question. Where are we going?"

A smug look blossomed from Du's red, broken nose. He sat back and puffed out his chest. "We're rounding up your other collaborator now. I couldn't get approval to bring in your brothers," he said to Kim, earning him a fiery look, "but there's little doubt that your hacker friend was the brains behind this. We'll take him into custody, and you'll all be moved to a GJ holding facility."

His smugness fell to confusion at a braying laugh from Ron. Even Kim's poker-faced anger cracked for a derisive smirk. Only Monique failed to offer up any amusement. "Are you serious, dude?" Ron asked. "Wade is majorly wired. He has security that'll make that beating we gave you look like a deep-tissue massage."

"You're in serious trouble if you think you'll catch Wade as easily as you caught us," Kim told him.

Du didn't seem ruffled in the slightest. He smiled at Kim graciously and said, "Perhaps. But perhaps he won't be so averse to an impromptu meeting with his team and Global Justice. After all, there's a terrible threat that needs addressing, and Mister Load's assistance would be invaluable."

Kim felt something cold and ugly wash over her soul as she glared at this man. His zeal for her capture had nearly cost her a dear friend. Now he wanted her to betray yet another friend. Whatever case of mistaken identity he suffered from bought him no sympathy from Kim. The chip he carried for them on his shoulder had crossed lines Kim had never before considered.

"Not a chance," she said.

"I might reconsider if I were you. Without your cooperation, this investigation could become quite the muddied affair." Du leaned forward, smirking with everything but his eyes. "Global Justice has quite a bit of leeway in matters pertaining to national security, little girl. I have full authorization to detain any and all threats I see fit until the full extent of those threats can be ascertained. You. Your friends. Your families. All cooling your collective heels in Guantanamo Bay." He looked right at Monique, dipping down to catch her teary eyes. "You think you're crying now?"

Scarlet sparked in Ron's glare. "Leave her alone," he said.

Du didn't listen. "Just imagine how you'll cry when you, your mother, and your father are squatting on a five by eight block of concrete with nothing to do but take turns filling a bucket. Will you be so loyal to Mister Load then? To Miss Possible?"

Monique squeezed her eyes shut and let slip a single sob before biting her lip. She dipped her head, raining tears into her lap as she shook with the force of her stifled cries.

Kim watched Monique's shoulders shake. She felt the resurgence of her own tears, and again clamped them back behind her eyelids. When she opened her eyes, she bathed Du in a wash of jade fire. "Whatever you think we did," she said slowly, fighting through every word to keep her voice steady, "we didn't do. We're the good guys."

"You're grandstanding vigilantes," Du scoffed derisively. "Worse, now you're thieves. It's time the real heroes put you in your place."

The truck lurched beneath them, compressing them together on their respective benches. Two agents opened the back doors and flooded the van with twilight. Kim squinted into the sunset while Doctor Director unbound her legs and wrists. Du uncuffed Ron and then shoved him out the door, where the armored agents caught and held him. Leveling a meaningful gaze, he said, "Play nice, and your friends won't have to pay for your mistakes. Clear?"

With one last glance at Monique, Kim uttered, "Crystal."

She exited the truck with a hop and a look that made Du's agents let go of Ron at once. Each of the agents had been part of the assault, and now bore painful bruises as a result. They backed away as Du followed Kim out with his rifle in hand. The suburban neighborhood around them prompted a large and fake smile to Du's lips. "Act happy," he said through his teeth. "Think of your families."

Ron hit him with a cheesy grin. "Dude, you're a tool," he murmured cheerfully.

"No tricks, or we do this the hard way."

Kim and Ron felt the agents' eyes at their backs as the five of them walked to Wade's front door. The two-story house could have leapt from the pages of Better Home and Garden; immaculate, homey, the house seemed like the last place to find one of the ten smartest people on the planet.

At Du's nod, Kim pressed the intercom buzzer set next to the door. There was a brief pause before its speaker came to life with wet crunching noises. _"Yeah?"_ a buzzing voice emerged, muffled by some sort of snack on the other end of the connection.

The lowered tip of Du's rifle brushed against Kim's bare back beneath the hem of her blouse. She glanced back at the agent before answering, "Hey, Wade," in her brightest voice. "Sorry to drop by unannounced. Hope you don't mind."

"_Kim? ...hey, no problem. What's going on?"_

"We need to do a co-op with GJ on a new sitch. Nothing world-ending, but sooner is better."

"_No sweat. Folks are out to dinner, so we can use the holoprojector in the living room. I'll buzz you in."_

A pair of steel cuffs descended on Kim's wrists as the front door opened on its own. Kim glanced back at the nervous agent clasping her hands behind her back, and then at the other agent, who was doing the same to Ron. Du smirked at them both and waved them toward the door with his rifle. "You see? Nice and peaceful." To his agents, he ordered, "Weapons up on sight. This boy is as tricky as these two, but not nearly as tough. Lots of bluster, but no firing unless I give the order."

They marched into the house, the teens in the lead being covered with rifles from the rear. Past a short hallway, they entered a large, elaborate living room with furniture of leather and oak, and an entertainment system that spanned one whole wall with its extravagant flat-screen television.

The five stopped in the middle of the empty room, looking for their absent host. "Call to him," Du commanded Kim.

Kim gave him a poisonous glare before she shouted, "Wade?"

"_Just a sec,"_ a hidden speaker told her.

Tight shafts of light crisscrossed the room without warning. The red beams shot from hidden projectors into hidden receptors, creating a lattice that filled the room without touching a stick of furniture. The carefully aimed beams cocooned all five occupants of the room, keeping them still and separated, holding them at bay with the spillover heat each beam bathed them in. Ron yelped and the agents swore at they froze. Kim smiled.

"What is this?" Du bellowed.

The massive television flickered and lit with Wade's grinning visage. _"That would be your typical McHenry Laser Grid. Seven years old, and it's still state of the art security."_

Du reached carefully around one of the deadly beams to touch his ear. "All units, mobilize. The operation has been compromised."

Wade looked insulted. _"Please. Your equipment's been offline since the moment you stepped in here. That includes your weapons,"_ he said as he noticed Du mashing the trigger of his rifle.

"Uh, Wade?" Ron twitched his nose, forcing the drop of sweat collecting there to fall into the beam just in front of his face. "Little problem: we're stuck too."

_"Yeah, the system didn't recognize friend or foe,"_ said Wade. His grin grew. _"Not until I wired it to respond to Team Possible tracking microchips."_

"Wait. You've got me LoJacked?" Ron twisted around in examination of himself, heedless of the deadly beams. Wherever his body leaned too far, the beam in question deactivated, leaving him unharmed. As soon as the Ron-part moved again, the beam resumed, creating a rolling effect of flashing lasers around him. "Seriously, where'd you put it? Is that why I beep in airport security?"

Du's lost smugness found its way to Kim's features as she stepped forward confidently. The grid's individual lasers snapped off and on for her to walk up to the lead agent. "Lesson One? Nobody ever drops by on Wade unannounced. He hates that." Then she pulled her hands from behind her back and dangled loose handcuffs in front of his laser-trapped face. "Lesson Two: super villains use death traps and force fields for a reason. Handcuffs haven't worked on me since I was fourteen." She dropped the cuffs into the laser field. Slagged bits of metal reached the carpet.

Ron tossed his own cuffs at Du, peppering the agent with the fragmented remains, and added, "Nyah, nyah." Then he followed Kim through the grid, feeling quite Moses as the red beams winked out of their way.

"This isn't over," raged Du. He trembled in fury while his men trembled with the effort of keeping still. "I'll make you pay!"

"Send us the bill," Kim called as she exited the laser grid.

They found and ascended the stairs in a trot, knowing full well that their bravado had no basis. Global Justice wasn't stupid, whatever opinion Kim had of them now. The teens had a maximum of five minutes before a squad of agents burst through the front door looking for their missing numbers. Still, Ron had sense enough to prioritize his issues.

"That was some weak banter back there, KP," he said. "'Send us the bill?' Novice stuff."

She didn't glance back as they approached Wade's door. "I'm getting banter-flack from the guy who just now razzed a secret agent with 'nyah, nyah?'" she asked.

"Touché."

They reached Wade's bedroom door deep at the end of a long hall. Kim rapped it twice and stepped back, just in case. "Wade, it's just us."

"Hang on," a muffled voice called back.

The door before them dissolved into smooth, bare wall. Seconds later, another door—the real door, or so they presumed—appeared in a reverse manner on the wall to their left. Kim glanced at Ron, who shrugged at the holographic trickery, and then strode through the new door.

Neither of them had seen Wade's new setup since he'd been forced to rebuild from the previous month's adventure. His new equipment reflected the caution and paranoia Wade was famous for. Every computer in the room was paired with at least one other, oftentimes two or three, in a synergistic network of redundancy that made his old computer systems seem like piffle. The room's only chair rested before a bank of monitors that wrapped around their user for two hundred and seventy degrees of informational bombardment. Tables laden with half-finished circuit boards sat wherever the computers did not, leaving very little space for Kim and Ron to tiptoe over castaway components of unknown purpose.

Wade stood beside his chair, crumpling an empty bag of Cheez Crunch between his hands. He wiped crumbs from his mouth as he tossed the bag on the floor, and said, "Hey, guys. Sorry about the mess."

"No apologies, Wade. You rock," Kim told him, eliciting a proud look from the boy. "We'd be jailbirds without your laser show."

"Nice digs, buddy," Ron said with an appreciative whistle.

"Yeah. Too bad you guys dragged a government agency here to confiscate everything." Wade ignored their sheepish looks, sweeping piles of circuit boards from his chair to sit before his monitors. "So, why is Global Justice itching for the Team Possible hat trick?"

"That's what we need your magic fingers for," Kim said. "Think you could break into GJ's data network and do some quick digging?"

Wade hunched over his keyboards. "Ctrl+Shift+Presto," he said, and turned his fingers into blurs of key clacking. His monitors flickered on with streaming data too fast for Kim to follow. In seconds, those data streams gave way to the Global Justice icon, a white globe wreathed with a laurel. "We're in. What's the name of the game?"

Kim leaned over his shoulder to watch him slice through the government's finest firewalls like fine, aged cheese. "Idaho. Anything with a tag about me or Ron."

Behind them, Ron fiddled with a stack of circuit boards, turning them into an impromptu game of Jenga. The stack wobbled precariously as he topped it with a new board, and said, "They think we stole Drakken's Enema Cannon. The one from the Observatory."

"Entropy Cannon," Kim corrected him.

"Mine sounds worse," Ron said, distracted.

"Guys?" Wade's face grew ashen as he stopped typing abruptly. "You're gonna want to see this. Like, now."

Kim watched as each of Wade's monitors blinked and then fuzzed with a black and white high-angle view of a concrete wall. Soundlessly, the wall burst inward, spraying dusty rubble into the air. A stream of burly, cowled men exited the hole and spread to all four edges of the screen, making way for a figure that trailed behind them.

A sharp breath whistled through Kim and Wade at the sight of this new figure. Drawn by their surprise, Ron turned to watch as well. He knocked over his circuitry stack as he caught sight of an unmistakable resemblance featured in the middling quality of the video. There, a tiny Ron Stoppable marched onto the screen and began shouting silent orders to the henchmen around him. Then he marched off the screen, down and out of sight. Seconds later, a feminine figure clad in a similar Team Possible uniform bounded through the hole, flipping and dancing too fast for the camera to catch her face. It did, however, capture her glorious mane of hair fluttering behind her acrobatics like a banner.

The angle changed. Now they could see more of the facility, which looked hauntingly familiar as well. It was a dead ringer for Doctor Director's Evidence Locker warehouse, albeit smaller. Boxes and doomsday weapons covered in sheets filled the cavernous room. As the screen-Ron marched up to the boxes, the real-Ron lost his voice to shock. He had no jokes to give as he watched himself duck and weave through a wave of GJ sentries.

The bouncing screen-Kim followed fast, jumping from sentry to sentry as her real counterpart watched on in horror. It took Kim two tries to get her voice to work. "Okay. This is pretty convincing," she said. "But there are plenty of explanations for this. Camille Leon could have—"

"She's still in lockup," Wade said after a few keystrokes.

Kim wasn't finished. "Then somebody faked it," she said.

Wade shook his head. "I just authenticated the video," he said. "This is actual footage from GJ's new Boise Locker."

"Look at me go," Ron murmured, entranced by the grainy fight on the screen. "I'm kickin' ass."

Exasperated, Kim cried, "Ron, that isn't you! Wade, that is not us!"

"I agree," said Yori.

Yori leaned over Wade's head, scrutinizing his monitors. Her unflappable calm had survived the battle and subsequent vanishing act without a scratch. Kim yelped and jumped at the sudden appearance of Yori. Wade swiveled in his chair and rolled back. Ron simply looked over with a shrug at the ninja standing between him and Kim. There had been no entrance, no approach. One minute, empty air; the next minute, Yori.

"Hi, Yori," Ron said easily while his friends recovered. "Where the hell are my sister and my mole rat?"

Yori didn't look away from the monitor as she lightly grasped Ron's chin and turned it down. Ron's gaze tapered past Yori's curves to her legs, where a familiar little pest stood with her arms wrapped around Yori's knee. A pink blob perched on the girl's head. Two sets of amber eyes gazed up at Ron, shimmering with relief.

Hana and Rufus squealed with glee as Ron scooped them up into a tremendous hug. "Wana!" Hana exclaimed, climbing his chest until their noses touched. "Yori is so cool! She snuck us out before those soldier guys saw us. She's so much better at the sneaky stuff than you are. She kept us hidden the whole time! We watched you guys until you escaped."

"How did… You didn't… I have security!" Wade wailed helplessly at the ninja. "Infrared! Ultraviolet! X-ray!"

Both Kim and Yori ignored his protests. "Thanks for the assist," Kim said.

The dry sarcasm bounced off Yori's cheek. Her brows knit as the pirated video ended and looped back to its beginning. Leaning back, she said, "This figure's similitude to Ron-san is uncanny, but his movement is entirely different. Ron-san's movement is joyous, chaotic, unpredictable, even sloppy."

"Hey, I resemble that remark," Ron shot playfully as he rubbed noses with a giggling Hana.

"This figure," explained Yori, "is of singular focus. Driven unto the brink of obsession. Fiercely devoted to each movement. It is familiar," she said with puzzlement, "but I can think of no man that fights precisely like this."

Kim watched the look-alikes on the screen with a darkening expression. She didn't share Ron's admiration or Yori's curiosity. The pair in the monitor had defamed them and cost them a lifelong alliance with Global Justice. "When I'm kicking his butt, I'll be sure to ask him about it," Kim said.

Wade, back at his computer, changed his monitors with a few click and a worried glance back. "Um, guys? We might not get the chance for butt kicking. Ever again."

The room looked back to Wade's monitors in silence. Wade's pirated video had become a live feed of the house's exterior. Formerly, only one black truck had been parked against the curb, GJ's attempt at subtlety to avoid arousing Wade's suspicions. Now that subtlety had failed, the spy agency had fallen back on its secondary strength: overwhelming military force.

Ron whistled at the small convoy of trucks and cars on the lawn, as well as the trio of hover jets that dominated the street behind them. Even miniaturized on the monitor, the armada comprised an intimidating show of force. So did the dozens of armored agents marching toward the house. He could hardly see Wade's lawn anymore for all the Justice coming for them. "Is it a compliment that they think it'll take this many soldiers to beat the tar out of us?" asked Ron.

"Mwoah, cluster-buster," Rufus chattered from atop Hana's locks.

Hana, seated on Ron's shoulders, wrapped her hands around Ron's forehead to steady herself. "Sixty-three soldiers," she counted in the blink of an eye. "They're spread out in groups of three to five."

"Wade?" asked Kim.

He shook his head. "The house can hold them off for a few minutes, but I didn't think we'd ever be under a prolonged military siege."

Kim glared at the armada parked on Wade's lawn. Then her gaze dropped to a lower monitor, where the strange intruder robbed GJ's Locker using Ron's face and her moves. As she turned, a distracting piece of cloth brushed against her arm. She looked down to find her empty sling still dangling from her neck. She pulled it over her head with her bad arm and tossed it aside. The twinge in her elbow deepened her scowl.

Let her arm hurt. She had work to do.

"Vacation's over, boys," Kim said. "Let's remind these guys who we are and what we do."

**End Act I**

* * *

Mizzidy-mad props go to Isamu for the beta-reading of this chapter. If you haven't checked out his KP/Shadowrun fic yet, well, then, chances are you're not listening to me anyway. But on the off chance that you are, go and give him some attention after you review the crap out of my story.

We'll be taking another week's break for polishing and primping, and then it's on to Act II, which is the second act, also referred to as the prelude to Act III. Stay patient, stay tuned, and stay fabulous!


	4. A Daring Escape for Some

_All-Purpose Disclaimer_

Kim Possible is a registered trademark of Disney, Inc. All characters and concepts are used without permission for no profit in this fan-created fictional work. All original characters and concepts found therein are the intellectual property of Cyberwraith Nine, and are not to be used without the author's prior, express permission.

Admit it. You all want Cameron Du for your fics. Go on, it's okay. He's a dashing figure of authority, and attractive to boot. Even I find myself lost in his steely eyes and his lantern jaw.

* * *

"Why are you doing this?" 

Doctor Director turned back to the open back of the truck and lowered her hand from her ear. The squawking sit-rep continued without her notice. She almost felt grateful for the distraction. Between the grandiose arrival of the Global Justice reinforcements and the stubborn refusal of the Load house to let them in, the situation was spiraling out of her control at an alarming rate.

She still had men trapped behind the metal shutters that had sprung to cover every avenue of entry into the house. The Washington-appointed commander of the mission—her Director of Intelligence, Cameron Du—had been unfit or unable to answer the call of his armada of trucks and hover jets parked on the front lawn. Doctor Director had assumed temporary command ever since his disappearance into the house, when he had led Possible and Stoppable in at gunpoint with the intent to capture Load with his two friends as bait. Clearly, that had gone as well as she had expected, leaving her with the wholly insane last resort of blowing up an American house in the middle of suburbia to capture three teenagers.

So Doctor Director escaped the thought of deploying her secretive spy soldiers against former allies by answering the meek, half-whispered question of their only remaining prisoner. The girl cuffed and benched in the truck was a true beauty, with skin the color of rich coffee, and lustrous hair as black as coal that cascaded over her shoulders in thick waves. Her blouse had been torn open, and revealed her taste for designer undergarments and a taut, curvy physique the older woman couldn't help but envy in passing for its youth. Prominent about the girl, though, was a cast wrapped around her upper arm that stood the limb at a right angle. It was an injury, a mark of courage, she had received when she had helped Kim Possible save the world only a month ago.

"Why are you doing this?" Monique asked again. "Kim and Ron aren't the bad guys. I've never even seen them litter. Where do you guys get off dropping a platoon on their heads?"

Seeing the girl and what she had suffered through, what she still suffered through, made Doctor Director hesitate. "They broke into a government facility and stole a doomsday weapon in front of twenty cameras," she answered.

"Bull-honky." Monique's puffy eyes grew harder, as did her voice. "If Kim wanted your doomsday doodad, you wouldn't get the chance to come after her like this. Someone set them up."

"I know my orders. If they're innocent, they should turn themselves in and let us sort this out."

Monique's glare dropped to her chest, where only a trace of pink remained from Ron's miracle touch. "Maybe they've seen what you do to innocent people," she muttered.

The last of the sun trickled under the horizon, taking color with it. Floodlights from the hover jets lit the world into a shadowy black and white version of reality. "This isn't how I wanted it to be," Doctor Director murmured.

Monique leaned back and closed her eyes. She wiped the salty crust from her lids as best she could with her hand still cuffed to the bench. "Well, that makes it okay," she whispered bitterly.

The ratcheting of metal shutters turned both women's attention to the house's front door. Its metal folded back into a hidden compartment, revealing the actual door, which swung open slowly. The GJ agents on the porch who had been trying to force the shutters stopped and backed away as Kim Possible stepped onto the front mat.

Thirty guns trained their muzzles on Kim from agents all throughout the front yard. "Hold your fire!" Doctor Director bellowed. "Maintain positions!"

Kim raised her hands above her head slowly. She surveyed the armada of vehicles and army of agents on the lawn, giving special consideration to the three armored agents on the porch. Her fleeting gaze locked with Doctor Director's at the back of the convoy. "Y'know, if you had shown this kind of enthusiasm with Drakken or Dementor, or any of the others, my elbow probably wouldn't hurt like hell right now," she called.

"Echo Team, secure Possible. Slowly," Doctor Director murmured into her jacket collar. Then, to Kim, she called, "I don't want another scene, Kim. Please don't make this difficult."

The agents on the porch advanced on Kim with deliberate caution, their rifles trained on her chest. Kim grinned and gave the flat badge of metal in her palm a squeeze. "Sorry, Betty," she called back. "I'm a difficult lady. Just ask my boyfriend."

* * *

**Kim Possible  
Our Power Together**

_By Cyberwraith9_

* * *

**Act II: In which our heroes and villains split and consolidate, respectively, their resources in order to accomplish their quite differing but simultaneously likewise fantastic goals.**

* * *

_Five Minutes Ago_

"There," Wade said, pulling back from his computer. "Security's locked down. Every entrance is sealed up…at least, until they blow us up with the bazillion guns they've got pointed at us."

The distant sound of ratcheting metal reached their sanctuary in Wade's room, deep in the house where his hidden collection of monitors and hardware kept watch over all worldly things digital. According to Wade, the house was now airtight, secure, and capable of withstanding mortar shells. Unfortunately, as Kim noted by the monitors depicting the front lawn, Global Justice had brought to bear considerably more than mortar shells.

Kim motioned everyone to the worktable at the center of Wade's room. Ron, Wade, and Yori looked to her in silent expectation. Even little Hana peered over the table's edge with Rufus still perched on her barrette, both of them quiet and hopeful that Kim would get them through this ordeal. Kim wished she had their confidence in her. "What are our options?" she asked commandingly.

"Have our collective ass handed to us by the US government's ultra-secret spy police?" said Ron.

"Ooh," Hana said at his use of the word "ass," to which he tossed her a stern look.

"Options that end with us winning," Kim shot, and cowed both Stoppable siblings with a glare. "Come on. There's someone out there impersonating us. Personally, I'm not going to rot in a GJ holding cell until they decide we didn't do it."

Ron frowned. "We might also want to get a jump on figuring out the 'why' while we're sorting out the 'who.' I don't know why anybody would want Dementor's Elephant—"

"Entropy," Wade corrected.

"—Entrophy Cannon, but it can't seriously be for any non-devastating reasons," Ron finished.

"We must first escape this predicament." Yori pulled them back from the big picture to the crisis at hand. "We must evade the numerous soldiers. A chase would be most disadvantageous, considering the plethora of vehicles they have at their disposal."

Kim agreed. GJ had guns, jets, and sensors of every kind, which eliminated her favorite options of _fight_, _flight_, and _sneak_. They needed an edge, and the one piece of luck they'd had all day was that they'd been cornered in the very house where their edge lived. "Wade," she said, "what've you got for me?"

At the mention of his name, Wade was already moving. He swept the piles of circuit boards and machinery off the table. The rest of them jumped back to avoid losing their feet in the rain of junk. Then Wade went under the table and came back up with a smooth, black case of lacquered wood. An irrepressible grin dominated his face as he set the box on the empty table.

"Ladies and gentleman, I give you the future of hero accessories."

He opened the box.

Ron did not share his friends' puzzled expressions at the contents of the box. He expressed his disappointment with a vocal, "That's it? Watches and pins?"

The plush velvet interior of the box held two pairs of small objects. The first was a set of his-and-hers watches, one large enough for a manly wrist, the other, small and dainty. Both were crafted from a silvery alloy, possessed unmonogrammed Team Possible arcs as their faces, and were tasteful enough for casual or formal wear. The watches were not what Kim had expected, and certainly weren't the weaponry Ron had hoped for.

"I'll pretend you didn't say that," said Wade, refusing to surrender his moment to Ron's ignorance. He picked up the slimmer watch and gave it to Kim. "Meet your new Kimmunicator," he said.

Kim slid the watch over her hand and examined it. "It's small," she said at last, somewhat at a loss for words. Chagrinned, she added, "And, no offense, but I can't see how useful it will be without any controls. How do I…?"

Wade's grin grew sly. He chucked Ron's watch to him and waited with impatience for Ron to force it over his giant knuckles. "Tell the watch to call Ron."

Shrugging, Kim looked down at her slim watch. "Kimmunicator: call Ron."

The face of Kim's watch glowed. She jumped, startled, as the air above her wrist crackled and hardened into a rectangle of white light that faded into an image of Ron's dumbfounded expression. Kim glanced over at the real Ron, who stared at a similar hologram of her hovering over his wrist.

Turning back to her own screen, she moved her arm experimentally. The screen moved with her accordingly. She touched the screen. The hologram tingled, but felt as solid as anything else she'd ever touched. The screen tilted beneath her finger, and then sprang back when she released it.

"Amazing what you can do with force fields and holograms," Wade said smugly.

Kim continued to stare at the hovering screen as she heard a shrill, "Lemmie see, lemmie see!" in the background. The image of Ron blurred and became a crooked image of Hana when she jerked her brother's wrist. "Hi, Kim!" she sang.

With a smile and a wave, Kim said, "End call." Her hanging screen dissolved into nothing. "Okay, I'm sold. So what else does it do?" she asked Wade.

Wade shrugged with false modesty. "What can't it do? With the hard light projection system, you can emulate just about any tool you need. It has scanning functions, GPS, wi-fi, and satellite uplink to—"

A sharp hiss stopped Wade's list. The room flashed as a bright red beam leapt from Ron's watch and ran through the table. Wade cried out and snatched his lacquered box from the beam's smoldering touch. The beam winked out as it reached the end of the table, leaving the newly minted halves of the table to collapse together.

Ron grinned sheepishly at the annoyed glares from the rest of the room. "My bad," he said, pulling his hand away from the watch's sides. "The cutting laser has a hair trigger."

Wade scowled and clutched his box warily. "With all the downtime lately, I figured our gear could stand for an overdue upgrade. I'm just sorry I couldn't install the neurokinetic triggers in your Kimmunicators too. Damn things are expensive, and tricky as hell."

"Well, shoot," Ron said, shrugging, "You should've asked for my help. I'm a whiz with neuro-whatever-you-said-s."

Kim cast him an impatient glance. "Which are…?" she asked both Ron and Wade.

Helplessness curdled Ron's face. Hana jumped up and down at their feet with her hand raised, 'ooh'ing to answer the question. But Wade still hoarded his moment, and answered Kim's question by flourishing his box. "They're the control system for these," he said.

He opened the box again. Kim examined the second set of objects within: two small, metallic discs roughly the size of her palm, oval in the shape of the Team Possible insignia arcs. One badge bore her initials in red, while the other bore Ron's in gold. "And these are…?"

Wade's grin stretched to fill the room.

* * *

_Now_

Kim jumped and flipped over plasma burst fire, and slapped her palm to her chest. The metal badge clung to her blouse. Then it spread.

Matte black liquid spilled from the badge's edge and engulfed Kim's body with alarming speed. Her clothes vanished beneath the metallic liquid in a heartbeat. Her skin tingled with its touch. Halfway through her flip, Kim had transformed into a humanoid blob of glistening obsidian.

Color and form began to surface in the clinging black. Patterns and trim of vibrant red arose to give shape to Kim's shapely form. When she landed, she faced the trio of soldiers in form-fitting, shimmering armor with artful red accenting its dark metallic sheen, and a monogrammed Team Possible logo textured over her left breast.

The soldiers, startled, unleashed a hail of plasma auto-fire at the first sign of movement. Brilliant white bolts hammered into Kim's chest, each with force and heat enough to break a steel girder. She disappeared behind the flare of their weapons.

When she reappeared, Kim grinned at the soldier's confusion after they'd emptied their power cells into her chest. Wispy smoke trailed from her immaculate suit. "Sorry, boys," she said with a shrug.

A blur of motion set the agents' sights on the door as they frantically swapped the charges on their rifles. Ron flew out of the house with a sweeping kick that bowled all three men over the porch rail. He slapped his chest as he landed. A badge with his initials remained when he pulled the hand away.

"It's morphin' time!" he cried.

Liquid metal swallowed Ron into a gold-trimmed twin of Kim's suit. He puffed his armored chest and waggled his hands in his ears at the startled agents on Wade's lawn. Then, at Kim's nod, he formed the right flank of a two-person charge down the porch steps and into the thick of Global Justice's army.

Hesitation didn't linger long amongst the agents, who lifted their rifles and poured a horizontal wall of fire at the teens. Armored or not, anyone who charged the most elite soldiers on the planet had to be crazy, and those soldiers were eager to show them why. The air reeked of hot ozone in the maelstrom. Agents behind the front line had trouble actually seeing their targets through the thick of the plasma, and so fired as best as they could in the direction of the others' fire.

A half-globe of energy snapped into being in front of Kim. As Ron produced a similar field, the collars of their suits oozed up their necks, faces, scalps, drawing in loose hair as skintight helmets formed over their heads. Now peering through the HUD of her visor, Kim paused a second to collect her thoughts (which, now that they directly controlled her suit, were even more important to organize).

Radar and sonar fed tactical information directly into her brain via her Team Possible tracking chip and its relationship with her nervous system—a relationship she wasn't entirely comfortable with anymore. She knew exactly where everything and everyone on the battlefield was without looking. Her strength and reflexes were wired to the suit, both made exponentially better as a result. The information, the power, was too heady a feeling. She needed to adapt to it before she did anything rash.

"Booyah!"

Ron leapt thirty feet into the air, evidently unhampered by the overabundance of information. Plasma fire tracked him to hammer against his blue-white shield. He willed the shield to vanish, and twenty lethal shots struck his armor. Rather than dissipating, the plasma slithered across Ron's chest, trapped in magnetic micro-fields. The stolen plasma pooled in his hands, writhing into a ball of light, which he hurled into a truck parked on the lawn. Soldiers fled the beetle-backed truck, which became a blossom of fire and shrapnel that kicked the soldiers into the air.

As Ron landed, Kim plowed into a trio of agents. Or rather, she tried; at her lightest push, the agents went flying, wailing, and tumbling. She stumbled, having expected more resistance from three burly men, and collapsed against the side of another truck.

The alloy bent under her hand with incredible ease. She twisted the side of the truck like putty, and traded her shock for awe. "Oh, crank the amp, Wade. You rock so hard!" Kim exclaimed.

Fifteen men converged on Kim when she turned from the warped truck. She felt the gentle tap of their blows. The Hephaestus alloy around her body made her nigh invulnerable, but she was not content to sit there and let her suit do the work for her. So she moved. She _moved_!

In the center of the agents' expert martial prowess, she flowed around their blows. They kicked. They punched. She wasn't there. She crouched and swept a gaggle of boots off the grass, bowling those fifteen men to the ground.

A gold and black blur wove through the yard. Agents bounced away wherever the blur went. The blur spoke in Ron's voice with an exuberant cry: "This is so cool! It's like a cheat code, but for life! Do you know how long I've been waiting for one of those?"

Kim caught and returned a volley of plasma, and searched the scattering crowd. Her HUD zoomed in on a familiar truck in the back of the armada and the eyepatched woman screaming orders next to it. "Ron," she called, "I need a Number One Special, Broadway Style."

"Heavy on the style, KP," he called back. Brilliant blue light erupted from his fingertips and spread into great scoops, which he swung down before him into a wedge. His mask stretched with an obvious smile as he chugged across the lawn, tossing agents into the air, tearing up great chunks of sod.

Chaos erupted behind Kim's running leap. She cleared the nose of a hover jet and landed on the rear bumper of the truck, wrapping her hand into its door and perching above a startled Doctor Director. The spymaster stopped in mid-shout as Kim's mask and helmet slid back into her collar, freeing her glower.

The two women stared each other down. Beyond them, gunfire and shouting hailed the success of Ron's distraction. Doctor Director lowered her hand from her ear and squared her shoulders against the teen. Kim hung from the truck's side, silent. Finally, Doctor Director said calmly, "You haven't won anything here. Don't you understand that?"

Dark emerald drilled into the woman Kim had trusted implicitly. Then Kim said, "This isn't going to end well for you."

"You aren't the hero this time," Doctor Director told her.

Kim clenched her jaw. Her brow tilted forward, casting shadow over her glare. "Too bad for you. From the looks of things, I'll make one hell of a villain."

Kim jerked the door off its hinge and tossed it aside, revealing a startled and cuffed Monique. A gesture broke the cuffs, and drew Monique out of the truck with wide eyes and rattling chains. Doctor Director didn't speak as her prisoner walked free. When Kim nodded meaningfully at her, she climbed up into the truck and sat on its bench.

Reaching up, Kim grabbed the top of the truck and pulled down. Metal shrieked as she pinched the back of the truck shut, trapping Doctor Director inside. Then she wasted precious seconds for a desperately needed hug. Monique squeaked in her super-strong arms as she whispered, "Are you okay, Mon?"

"That outfit is so hot," Monique answered listlessly. When they parted, she offered a weak smile. "What do you need me to do?" she asked.

Kim whipped her head around. A blue globe materialized around them as plasma bolts spattered against the shield, scaring Monique into ducking and shrieking. Kim stepped in front of Monique and summoned back her helmet with a thought. Her voice sounded harsher than she wanted it to through the faceplate over her mouth, but she needed her HUD for the next part of her plan. "Get ready to run. We aren't sticking around for the wrap party," she told Monique.

Monique clenched her eyes to hide the flashing fire on Kim's shield. "Do those duds of yours turn into a sports car? 'Cause these guys have jets and tanks coming out the tailpipe!"

"It's being taken care of," said Kim.

The rearmost hover jet of GJ's armada, parked in the street, roared alive with a blast from its VTOL thrusters. Parked trucks and SUVs crumpled beneath its wheeled struts as it wobbled in a tight circle, knocking aside vehicles, street signs, and a fire hydrant. Its opened ramp scraped sparks against the curb before digging into the lawn next to Kim and Monique. Looking up at the cockpit, the girls saw a tiny pink pilot waving at them from atop the controls.

Kim returned Rufus's wave with a grim smile that no one else could see. Sneaking Rufus across the battlefield to secure transport had been the easy part, considering the havoc she and Ron had wrought. Rufus's prodigious talent for operating unfamiliar machinery had never been in doubt. But now came the hard part.

"Ron!" Kim cupped her hand to her mask and hurled his name into the melee of flying bodies. "Stage Two! Ditch the Broadway and give me a Snowplow, left-wise!"

A black-wrapped thumbs up emerged from the dog pile of soldiers on the middle of the lawn. That dog pile exploded, revealing a flexing Ron amidst a spray of soldiers. The grin on his face was evident to anyone in earshot, regardless of his masking helmet.

"No pushing, boys. That's my job." He flicked his forearms. Blue-white ovals expanded from his wrists to form two force shells. Ron spun and leapt, knocking GJ agents across the lawn with the barest touch of his flickering shields. He juked, seemingly with no pattern, from end to end of the yard, flipping and spinning with a sheer joy of movement that most people would never know.

"Yori, go!" he bellowed.

Ron's shout drew a new shadow from the front door, a shadow with a katana and a little girl wrapped onto her back. Ron's forceful antics had all but cleared one side of the lawn, leaving a path for Yori to sprint to the waiting hover jet. The few half-conscious agents Ron had missed staggered at Yori, only to fall screaming with a flash of her blade. Her cuts were shallow and precise and not at all hampering to her run. Her passenger screamed in excited terror as she flipped over the flailing final agent, propelling them into the waiting ramp with a kick that drove his head into the sidewalk.

Monique watched the ninja carrying Ron's little sister disappear into their stolen ride. Yori's presence was a question for another time. "Kim," she asked instead, "what's gonna keep them from following us? They've still got two more—"

Energy gathered in Kim's hands, siphoning away from the globe that protected them. Kim quaked with the effort of restraining the raw power as she turned to the remaining two hover jets on Wade's lawn. The excess plasma from her shield collected from GJ's barrage joined the suit's reserves between her palms. Her HUD filled with flashing red warnings of impending overload. Kim gritted her teeth and ignored everything but her two targets. She wouldn't get another shot.

She released the energy with a shout. Two blue-white streams burst from Kim's hands. The first crossed the yard and sheared through the front strut of one jet. The other hover jet caught Kim's second stream in its thrust assembly, which melted into an unrecognizable lump. Before its glow faded, the first jet tilted forward, collapsing onto its nose and crushing its fuselage out of shape with a deafening clap of metal.

Kim sagged under sudden weight. Her suit, devoid of power for its enhancements, felt like an iron overcoat. She tapped the monogram on her breast and shivered as the suit retracted into its badge. Her hands throbbed with mild burns from the blast.

"Ron, let's go!" she bellowed, and then sprinted up the final jet's ramp with Monique in tow.

The shields on Ron's arms flickered out after cymbal-bashing an agent's helmet. Ron crossed the yard in two jumps and reached the front door. There, Wade waited just out of sight behind the door's frame. "Can Wade come out to play?" Ron asked, kneeling on the front mat.

The portly teen crawled onto Ron's back with a pained expression. "You're enjoying this way too much," he said, and wrapped his arms over Ron's shoulders.

Ron answered with a leap forward that broke through the porch rail in a burst of splinters. Recovering GJ agents ducked anew as the soles of Ron's feet lit with fire. Rocket propelled, Ron carried Wade through the air, humming a John Williams score with his arms stretched in front of him. "Bring on those tall buildings and locomotives!" he cackled.

Wade clung tighter and shook his head. "Way too much," he muttered.

They landed on the ramp as it cycled up into the hover jet's fuselage. Ron turned with Wade still on his back and tossed the ragtag collection of soldiers a salute. "We'll bring it back with a full tank," he called to them.

The ramp lifted them into the stark interior of the hover jet, which lurched under their feet, driving the pair to their knees. Ron caught Wade by the armpits as his helmet retracted into his collar. He examined his surroundings with bare eyes.

He had been in plenty of hover jets before, and recognized this as the troop passenger section. Long benches lined each wall leading to the hatch at the far end, with equipment lockers set above the benches. The promise of pilfered spy gear didn't thrill Ron as it once had; he was wearing the coolest gadget he could think of. Instead, he reserved his thrill for the pair of Asian beauties greeting him with smiles from the bench.

"Ron!" Hana leapt into Ron's arms and constricted him in a hug that used her whole body. "That was so awesome!" she cried.

"Heh. Yeah, I am pretty—"

Hana ignored him and babbled, "Yori's amazing, the way she used her sword on those guys, and flipped and jumped. She's the best!"

Ron chuckled as he kissed Hana's crown. "Yeah, she is," he agreed. Glancing over Hana's crop of lustrous hair, he caught Yori's eye, and mouthed the words, "thank you." Yori simply nodded and bowed.

The far hatch swooshed open. Monique stepped through, angling herself to keep from bumping her cast on the bulkhead. Terror sweat clung to her greenish face. "Kim's got us airborne," she reported, her voice aquiver. She approached the boys on the ascended ramp with a tired look. "You okay?" she asked.

Ron set Hana aside and rolled his arm. "A little tired, but I'll be okay," he answered.

Monique gave a snort. "Not you, Ultra Suit." She knelt next to Wade, who had collapsed next to Ron. Her hand brushed his face as she looked him over for injuries. "You okay, cute stuff?" she asked.

With a weak smile and a blush, Wade propped himself on his elbows. "I can't even imagine how mad my folks will be about the house," he said.

"Tell me about it," Ron and Hana muttered in unison.

The deck lurched again, throwing the ragtag reunion to one side. Yori slid behind Hana and cradled the girl as they fell hard onto one of the benches. Monique and Wade fell into a jumble of limbs. Ron rolled and cracked his head on a bench leg, discovering that, in spite of Kim's insistences to the contrary, his head wasn't the hardest material on the planet.

Thoughts of Kim swam in his pain-packed head as her crackling voice filled the chamber. _"We aren't home free yet, guys. GJ had some other jets in the air, and I'm not sure how to turn on this thing's stealth... What? Yes, I see them!"_ Rufus's panicked gibbering came over the loudspeaker. _"I said I see them! You wanna fly this thing? Hey, get away from that stick! I was being sarcastic! Look, just find the stealth control before—whoa!"_

The deck shook with a deafening blast as something detonated beneath the banking hover jet. The entry ramp shuddered and popped as its locking clamps failed with an explosion of wind. A startled yelp was all that Monique could muster before the ramp dropped out from underneath her, carrying her and Wade out on violent wind that swept them off the end of the ramp. Their screams faded into the roar of the open hatch.

Ron didn't waste a second. He ran along the open ramp hatch and slapped a large red button on the wall. Emergency gears groaned and grinded inside the floor, drawing the ramp back up against the force of the wind. Before it finished, Ron dove out the closing gap, vanishing into open air behind the cycling ramp's clanging clamps.

"Ron!" Hana shrieked and clawed at Yori's arms in vain. "Ron! Lemmie go!"

Yori closed her eyes and clutched the child to her chest. The living tantrum in her arms grew and sobbed and kicked and screamed, until at last, the ramp clanged shut, and Hana collapsed into miserable tears.

"Come with me," Yori said, cradling Hana and standing. "We must find Kim-san."

Sorrow flooded into Yori's gi where the littlest Stoppable buried her face. "I want my Wana," she moaned. "I want my Wana. I want to go home."

The prayers Yori uttered were, to Yori's shame, more for herself than for the child. "Come," she said, and jogged to the hatch lest the ramp failed again. She let Hana cry for the both of them. Her tears would have to wait.

* * *

_I am so screwed._

Ron's helmet surged around his head, banishing the wind and bringing with it the HUD with a display that tallied his altitude in a little green number. That little green number was depressingly low, and it shrank at a rate too quick for him to count along. So Ron busied himself by searching the skies for the reason he had jumped in the first place. The Tri-Cit region spun lazily below him in a carpet of lakes, roads, and pinpoint buildings. A dogfight blazed overhead, gone in seconds with subsonic speed.

Kim's dangerous words echoed through Ron's mind. "_Do all the things you've ever wanted to do with a girlfriend_." _Just what the hell does that mean? Why can't Kim ever make things simple? She's gotta know by now that I don't work these things out well on my own._

Then he spotted them. Monique and Wade lit up in his HUD with green rectagles as they spiraled further and further apart. The pair drifted a hundred feet apart below him, with screams loud enough for the suit's external mics to isolate and enhance. Though he didn't understand the mechanics behind it, Ron understood that the Inelastic Generator in his battle suit—the same device that turned a GJ haymaker into a love tap—would allow him to survive this fall. He also understood that Wade and Monique had no such generators of their own. What he didn't know was if his one generator could save them all.

_ Wait, is this one of those freaky boyfriend tests that girls put guys through? Am I supposed to know what to do before she tells me what to do? How am I supposed to know that? Kim always tells me what to do!_

Having wasted a half-second on the thought, Ron inverted and tucked his arms, and summoned his boot boosters to full burn. Gravity and jet fuel brought him to Monique in another few seconds. He tackled her in midair and wrapped her in one arm, shifting her weight to try and slow their spin. Her screams deafened half of him before his fervent thought turned the suit's mics off.

_God, this romance stuff is hard. Makes my head hurt. If I had known that keeping a girlfriend would be such a pain, I might have stuck to pro wrestling and tacos as my two great loves._

Precious seconds of aiming later, Ron willed his suit's forearm to stretch and unfurl, revealing a micro-grapple hidden underneath the red trim. His arm jerked at the grapple's launch. The tiny grapple crossed the sky and bit Wade's belt. With a single jerk, Ron brought his other screaming friend under arm, and clutched both of them tight.

_Man, I could go for a taco right about now. All this running around and being an enemy of the state has got me famished. Maybe if I aim myself right, I can hit a Bueno Nacho somewhere below us. Heck, I practically lived there, so it's probably fitting that my liquefied organs wind up there._

Seven seconds remained on the countdown. Ron spent three of them looking at the approaching ground, whose buildings and features grew depressingly large. Wade's screams had yet to become intelligible. Monique had managed simple words begging Ron to do something.

_Will Kim miss me when I'm gone? I wonder if she'll cry at my funeral. Nah, KP's not the crying type. She'll probably be fine a few minutes after she finds out, 's long as she's got a mission to finish. All business, that's my gal._

The force fields of Ron's suit responded to his thoughts, surrounding Wade and Monique in blue-white bubbles of protection. He concentrated hard and, without knowing the exact commands, instructed the suit to devote only as much energy to the IG through the force fields as it would take to keep Wade and Monique safe, and to put the rest to keeping himself alive.

_I gotta figure out a way to make this work. I gotta deserve her. If I lost her because I can't give her what she needs…_

Ron's HUD flooded with messages. **WARNING! DANGER! POWER FAILURE! SYSTEM FAILURE! **He would have read a dozen more, but his altitude ran out. The ground rushed up and hammered everything from his waking world. Only black agony remained, wrapped around Ron's last thought.

_God, I love her so much._

* * *

Too easy. It had been too easy. 

He strolled through the streets of Upperton with a bounce in his step. His brimming smile greeted the odd or apathetic looks of passersby. And why shouldn't he be pleased? The long, unseasonable coat he had been forced to wear to hide his tools of war was gone (shucked back at the Middleton Locker, along with the tools themselves), leaving him cool as a cucumber and light as a feather. His only encumbrance was a satchel hanging from his shoulder, the spoils of his victory. Pride puffed his black shirt and put a skip in his khaki cargo pants.

Only one cloud darkened his world of silver linings; his victory had come too easily. The guards at the Locker, competent all, simply weren't playing at his level. Nowhere near it. He had barged into a secure paramilitary complex and had not a scratch to show for it.

What would Father say of his victory and his spoils? Certainly he would be pleased! Perhaps even Shego would acknowledge him as worthy after this. Such a notion widened his smile, and made other parts of him feel odd in a pleasant way.

As his mind and feet wandered, the tall and expansive businesses of wealthy Upperton transitioned into shorter, less prosperous buildings possessed of more character than enterprise. Having memorized map after map of the Tri-City area, he recognized the streets and deduced that he was progressing toward the Upperton University campus.

A knowing smirk stretched his freckles. He recognized the area from more than maps. The memories from _before_, of the _others_, resonated in this sleepy neighborhood. This place held deep significance for the others, and he had happily inherited it as his own. The lair felt cold and empty, even with the company of his stocky father and the luscious (luscious?) Lady Shego. But this neighborhood? This quiet collection of houses and businesses built from old brick and left behind by the modern world to its simple devices?

It felt like home.

Presently, he passed a delicatessen whose storefront appeared as the definitive mid-twentieth century business Americana: old wooden barrels had been modified by hand into splintery patio furniture, with large crates for tables, and a tattered awning to shield it all from the summer sun. A yellow Star of David was painted in the deli's frosted window, chipping from years of weather, but proud and large nonetheless.

The boy felt an urge to enter the deli and say hello—without knowing quite to whom he'd be saying hello—when the door burst open. A young man no older than the boy (if only in appearance) knocked into him on the way out. The man gave him a wild-eyed look and clutched a brown paper sack to his chest before running down the block.

"Stop him!" a portly man of middling years bellowed as he exited the deli. His fisherman's hat hung at an angle for the cold, raw steak he'd slapped on the lump in his thinning blond hair. His mustache fluttered with the force of his shout: "Come back here with my money!"

The boy didn't stop to think. "I've got him, Uncle Don!" he said.

With one swift kick, he broke the back off one of the barrel chairs, snatched it out of the air, and slid the plank down the sidewalk with a deft toss. The plank skittered and spun as it caught up with the thief, slipping underfoot from behind. The thief yelped as his foot slid on the plank and flew out from under him. His face crashed on the sidewalk, the sack caught beneath his chest when the rest of him followed.

Don led the charge to catch up with the dazed thief. The boy ran close behind him. "Damn fine throw, m'boy. It was lucky you showed up, or this hooligan would have gotten away," said Don. He rolled the thief roughly with his foot and scooped up the wayward sack of bills.

"No big, Unc," said the boy.

When Don looked back to shower his nephew with praise, he stopped. "Ronald?" he asked, clearly confused. "Sweet vanity, what did you do to your eyes?" With squinted confirmation, he said, "Is this something that girlfriend of yours put you up to?"

The name startled some sense back into the boy. His hand swept through the sunny crop on his head and stepped back. "I…um…"

A snort ruffled Don's mustache. "Bravest kid I know hasn't the gumption to keep his eye color from his lady's whims. Well, at least you're just henpecked, and not a thief!" That last part Don shouted down at the thief, who was struggling to his feet. A swift kick from Don's shoe sent the thief stumbling down the block. "And you'd better pray I don't find out who your mother is, 'cause I'd be giving her a call, I promise you that!" Turning back, Don said, "How about a soda, Ron? On the house—"

Empty sidewalk answered Don's generous reward. Don looked around, confused. He shrugged after a moment's search and then walked back into his shop, already checking the day's receipts in his head with the contents of the paper bag.

The boy crouched behind a parked car, and did not stand again until the deli's door jangled shut. Excitement over this morning's success had curdled into confusion at this chance meeting. An entire line of GJ guns didn't frighten him in the least, but a portly shop owner who regarded him as family terrified him. He tried to remember this "Uncle Don," but couldn't.

His father had told him of the _others_. So why did he still get confused? Why couldn't he distance himself from the _before_?

The homey feeling the neighborhood had given him vanished.

His pocket buzzed, tearing him out of his thoughts. He pulled and answered his cell phone with a snarl. "What?"

_"Hey, amp down, Red,"_ said Shego.

His confusing feelings for Shego stepped aside for irritation. "That's not my name," he told her.

_"Whatever. Job's done?"_

"Hours ago."

_"Super. I've got the hover car stashed and ready, but this city is crawling with Global Jerks. I'm betting we have your stealthy tactic of door-kicking and gun-blazing to thank for that."_

"Father said—"

_"Uh-huh. Yeah. Not caring. Where are you?"_ When he told her, fuming silently, he could hear the smile in her response_. "Fine. Meet me at these coordinates. I think you'll know how to get there."_

She fed him the location, and then hung up without a goodbye. He nearly broke his phone hanging up. Shego mocked him. Still she mocked him, even after all he could do. And the pickup location, after this recent run-in with the deli owner (do **not** think of him as your uncle, because he's not, he **is not**!) was the worst insult of all.

He would teach Shego respect. He would show her that he was worth respecting.

* * *

"No!" Hana screamed, kicking her legs against the edge of the bucket seat. "No! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!" 

Kim gritted her teeth and yanked the control yoke to one side. The world outside their cockpit view port twisted as if in a blender. All three women in the cockpit turned red against the g-forces, while their mole rat tumbled through the air. "Can we talk about this in a second?" she bellowed.

The hover jet rattled around them with a combination of acrobatics and near misses. The latter came from a second trio of hover jets in hot pursuit of their getaway. The former kept them from becoming an expanding ball of gas and shrapnel, like the missiles that detonated in their wake.

Yori swallowed her stomach at another burst of subsonic derring-do that twisted the hover jet beneath her seat. She watched, keeping her eyes open only through a tremendous test of courage, as the Tri-City area blurred beneath them, and then became unbearably clear when Kim pushed their jet into a skin-peeling dive. "Forgive my callousness, child," she said to Hana with shaking voice, "but perhaps now is not the best time to distract—"

The skyscrapers of Upperton whizzed by their wings, turning Yori's suggestion into a cry that crushed her eyes shut. The hover jet's braking thrusters slammed the three young women against their seats' restraints, creasing their chests with x-shaped bruises. Three GJ hover jets in formation soared over the top of their jet and flew past their sudden change in speed.

Kim slammed the yoke back, lifting the nose of their craft in a loop that carried them deep into Upperton's skyscraper canyons. Cold sweat dripped down Kim's brow and soaked the silk fabric of her blouse. "We can't go back," she shot to Hana.

Hana didn't share Kim's tension or Yori's near panic. She thumped her fist against the leather upholstery holding her in place and shouted, "We have to go back! Ron needs us!"

"Ron's fine!" Kim shouted. She pushed her whole body into the yoke, trying with all her might to keep their relatively fragile aircraft from the glass walls of the urban canyons. "Worry about us. Rufus, where the hell is my Stealth Mode?"

The pink glaze spread across the communication monitor burbled at Kim's shout. A face pulled itself to the pink's surface with great effort, struggling against terrific g-force. "Trying!" he squeaked.

"Ron's not fine, he fell out of a plane at a high altitude! Even if that goofy suit kept him alive, he's still going to need help," Hana said in a tone that heavily questioned Kim's knowledge on the subject of Ron's condition.

A wall of glass and stone rushed up at them, eliciting a wail from Yori and a shout from Kim above the shrieking proximity alarm. Kim yanked the yoke into her chest. The bottom of their jet kissed the masonry of the building as they cleared the rooftops and rose into the sky. More alarms sounded as bursts of plasma fire bracketed their wings. The GJ task force had found them again.

Kim slammed the throttle forward, shoving them back into their seats with a burst of speed aimed straight at the sky. She could feel the hover jet buckle underneath her, and willed the stolen jet to hold together. "Middleton is not a friendly place right now," she argued back.

Hana would not be swayed. She caught Rufus as the mole rat peeled off of the panel and fell back. "Then we need to find Ron!" she shrieked.

"Ron can take care of himself!" screamed Kim.

"No he can't!" screamed Hana. She threw Rufus at Kim in a fit of pique, and wound up sticking him to the view port instead.

"Rufus!" Kim barked at the pink blur blocking her view. "Stealth. Mode."

Even with its impressive thrust assembly, the hover jet could not climb forever. The sleek black craft slowed, and then stalled, twisting back toward the ground in a dizzying dive.

Rufus slurped off of the view port and fell onto the control panel. His tail brushed a switch, flipping it casually.

The entire jet tingled for a single instant. None of them noticed. They were more invested in the trio of black hover jets flying straight at them spitting blue plasma. Their fire stopped abruptly. Kim watched them approach in what had to be the world's fastest game of chicken. She clenched the yoke's grips and gritted her teeth. She wouldn't swerve first.

She didn't swerve. Neither did the other jets.

Kim gritted her teeth and angled her jet's wings to fit through GJ's tight formation. The fuselage rattled fiercely against the three jets' wake, so much so that Kim barely recovered before she remembered to pull their craft up from its dive. She checked and double-checked the radar before risking a sigh. "I can't be sure, but I think we're running Stealth now. Good job, Rufus."

Yori pried her fingernails out of the seat beneath her. "We are invisible now?" she whispered hoarsely. "Is this jet capable of such a thing?"

Clicks and stomps accompanied Hana as she threw off her restraints and slid out of her seat. "Who cares? Turn around and land!" she bellowed with all the command a pre-kindergartener could muster. "We're going back for Ron!"

Kim watched their hometown blur beneath them. Within minutes, it would become a patterned grid of farmlands. Then it would green, and become rolling foothills that would lead up to the Rocky Mountains. "Hana, we can't go back," she said, and slid the throttle forward again.

Tiny hands grabbed hers and yanked the throttle back. Kim had to slam it forward or risk an engine flameout. She shot a glare down at the little meddler, only to recoil at the hate aimed up at her from Hana's eyes. "Turn around and save Ron!" Hana snapped.

"Hana, Ron is—"

"Ron is a boob!" Hana shrieked in Kim's face. "He's a stooge! Ron couldn't tie his shoes without you! He can't do anything without you! He needs you, and you aren't saving him! You have to save him! You have to!"

"Hana—"

"You have to!" Tears streamed from Hana's baleful glare. "You have to save Ron because he needs you! He's my brother and he needs you and you just left him there like he doesn't matter at all! He loves you, and **you** **left him!**"

Kim stared down at the trembling ball of tragedy gripping her hand on the throttle. The day's tribulations pressed mightily against Kim's lips. A nastier part of her wanted to scream at Hana, to remind her that she loved Ron too, and that it killed her to think for one second that Ron needed her right now, when she couldn't help him.

"Hana," she said instead, in as nice a tone as she could muster after being shot at all day, "if Ron survived the fall, then I promise you that there's nothing out there he can't handle. But we can't get caught, or…or we won't be able…"

She wished she could explain the need to clear their names. She wished she could explain how important it was to find whoever had actually stolen the Entropy Cannon before the tragedy from last month repeated itself. But Kim knew that, however she phrased it, she could never convince a little girl that running away was more important than going back for her big brother.

"I hate you!" Hana shrieked. She tore away from Kim and ran to the hatch, opening it with a hop that put its panel in slapping distance. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!" Her tiny cries continued until the hatch door hissed shut again, sealing Kim and Yori into solitude.

Kim released a long, mournful breath and sank back into the pilot's seat. Her hands shook with the aftershock of an adrenaline high. She took the control yoke in both hands and stared out the view port with no clear idea of what to do or where to go.

Shallow breathing from the copilot's seat drew her gaze sideways. Kim glanced over at Yori, and found in her stead a girl of waxen skin glistening with sweat. She trembled to return Kim's questioning gaze. "I do not believe I like flying anymore," she said in a quiet voice.

"You've flown before," Kim reminded her.

"My challenges in prior flights culminated in opening peanut bags and enduring an in-flight movie starring Carrot Top. I fear I do not like careening a mile above a city with lasers and missiles attempting to wrest me from the sky." Her knuckles white, Yori carefully extracted herself from her restraint harness. Each move she made was carefully measured, and uncharacteristically uncertain. The quake in her hands shocked Kim. Yori must have noticed, for she looked imploringly at Kim as she asked, "Please, speak of no one about my—"

"About what?" Kim said quickly. "In case you didn't notice, I'm really busy. I don't have time for gossip." She spoke airily, but her eyes smiled at Yori.

Reassured, Yori relaxed slightly. "Yes. Of course. But Kim-san, what will we do now? The child is correct. We must not abandon Ron-san."

A bitter pang struck Kim. She turned back to the view port and hardened her broken heart. "If Ron's not dead, he'll find us."

"And if he is dead? If they all died?" Yori had pulled the very question kicking and screaming from Kim's mind. Now she looked to Kim questioningly.

Kim's sorrow calcified, becoming the hot rage she would need to keep going. "Then we find out just how bad a bad guy I can be," Kim said.

**To Be Continued**


	5. The Long Night

Doctor Director waited with hands folded in her lap as a pair of massive metal shears tore through the opposite side of her twisted truck prison. For twenty minutes she sat there, meditating on the utter debacle their mission had become. In thirty-six years of working for the world's most elite espionage and tactical organization, she had never suffered a defeat like this.

The first time she heard of Kim Possible, she had been skeptical, even scornful, of the agent reporting to her how some twelve-year-old girl had managed to bypass the most advanced laser security grid in the world with nothing but a cheerleading routine. Preposterous trollop. Even if it was true, such a thing was a fluke, and hardly worth GJ's attention.

The first time she met Kim Possible, the girl was three years and three dozen wins past the laser grid. There was definite potential in her, no doubt. But juxtaposed with Will Du, her then-finest new agent, Possible was strictly bush league. It was nice to have her assist Du's investigation into the Killigan situation, but more importantly, she wanted Possible there to see how professionals did the job.

The first time she'd been awed by Kim Possible, the girl had disabled a nuclear bio-weapon. In mid-flight. With nothing but a Kimmunicator and a throwing star. When the girl walked away from that without a scratch and quit Global Justice, Doctor Director knew she had found—and lost—something amazing. Something special. Too special to let go of.

And the first time she had feared Kim Possible, staring down the woman (no longer a girl) who had no hope of winning, Doctor Director finally understood what made Kim Possible so special.

As the metal shears finished tearing a hole in the truck's side, Doctor Director couldn't help but think how the mission might have gone if Cameron Du had approached Possible with an olive branch instead of a sword. She wondered how things might have gone if she had never assigned Will Du to the original Evidence Locker as punishment. One more sin to heap upon the growing pile.

The hole fell clear with a clang, revealing a yellow firefighter and his jaws of life. Red lights flashed in the early night behind him. Doctor Director blinked at the flashing tops of a dozen emergency vehicles as she climbed out the hole. The firefighter helped her to the ground and, at her assurance that she was all right, went to help the paramedics with the dozens of men laid out on the lawn.

She marched around the emergency vehicles, past the domestic forces helping her injured men, and over more men that hadn't been tended to yet. News crews roved the lawn in camera-wielding packs. They sensed at once her authority, and made a bee line for her, hounding her with questions and microphones. She ignored both, and nodded her way past the police protection at the front door of the house, shedding her media clingers like water passing through a filter. Inside, she found a sight that almost made up for the career-ending debacle this night had become.

"What's taking so long, you idiots!" shouted Cameron Du. Trapped within a tight, crisscrossing laser grid, he could not even bellow at his men properly. The lethal beams cocooning him and his two agents forced Du to face the wall as he chewed out the jumpsuited technicians and firefighters gathered at the grid's edge. Sweat poured down Du's face and darkened his uniform in sloppy patches. Evidently, his body did not appreciate his need to remain rigid and outside of the lethal beams for the past hour or so.

One of the GJ technicians recognized Doctor Director and traded her a hasty salute. "We can't shut the field down, ma'am," he explained. "The encryption on the controls we found upstairs is like nothing I've ever seen. It could take weeks—"

Doctor Director unceremoniously relieved a nearby agent of his rifle and flicked the weapon to full-auto. It was an older rifle, pulled from stores once the agent had deduced that high tech was useless within reach of the Load house's unseen control. The gathered noncombatants flinched at the rolling bark of burst fire as Doctor Director perforated the walls and ceiling of the living room with classical slugs. Screams entered through the front door, followed shortly by police with weapons drawn. They arrived to see the laser grid falter and fade amidst a cloud of plaster and debris.

Du collapsed with a grunt, raining sweat from his bowed forehead. He gasped, and then glared up at Doctor Director's proffered hand. He rose without her help, straightened his soaked uniform, and offered deadly glares to the rescue teams staring at him. "Sweep this place from top to bottom. And someone bring me a sit-rep," he ordered.

While his men scattered like flies, Doctor Director fell into step beside Du, flanking his furious march out the front door. "I'll organize a task force to begin searching for them immediately," she said. Her fingers pressed to her ear, awakening her comm to a stream of military code.

"Just track the transponder on that hover jet," Du snapped. "Orbital weapons can lock on and take it out in five minutes." He touched his own comm and ordered the very idea in a barely controlled snarl.

Doctor Director frowned. In a slow and diplomatic tone, she said, "Considering the results of the last 'public' attempt to bring them in, we might want to try more subtle means."

Du stared at her for a long moment, ignoring the gaggle of media that swarmed around the pair upon their exit. "Thank you for your 'unsolicited' opinion, Madam Director, but I believe I can handle this. Why don't you secure the area and handle the media—by force, if necessary!" he announced loudly, scaring the circle of reporters back a step. To Doctor Director, he finished, "I'll begin tracking and targeting the rogue jet at once."

Her features softened a fraction. She glanced around at the cameras and leaned in, affecting a ghostly whisper only he could hear. "Cam, take your pride out of the equation. You're a good agent. A damn good one. But I know Possible better than anyone. There's no shame in handing the reins over to me."

Where she spoke softly, Du's voice rose to grandstanding proportions. "Doctor Director, I've allowed you to accompany this operation as a point of courtesy. I believe you've worn out that courtesy."

Doctor Director stared at him as though slapped. Camera crews pooled around her with reporters poised to capture her response. "Very well, Commander," she said too judiciously.

Du withdrew wordlessly from the standoff. An indelicate shoulder plowed him through the media circus, leaving his mentor and rival to bear the brunt of the First Amendment by herself.

Without the ring of reporters obscuring his view, he could see clearly the disaster his gambit against Team Possible had wrought. The hulking wrecks of the other hover jets remained in the Load yard. It would take several cranes and trucks to clear their husks from the battlefield, which was still littered with agents who had yet to regain consciousness. Behind the fire trucks and ambulances, a second convoy of GJ vans sat around a perched hover jet, belching another small army of men to help those on the scene. Without a doubt, Du had been responsible for the most public and humiliating failure in GJ history.

An agent interrupted Du on his way back to the second convoy. The young woman bore the patch of GJ's tactical division, as well as a shiner that squeezed her eye into a sliver. Du didn't recognize her face from those participating in the botched Possible capture. She must have arrived with the rescue forces.

She gave him a brief salute and said, "Your sit-rep, sir."

"Thank you, Agent…?"

"Dini, sir. Middleton Station Echo-Lambda-Zero-Four."

Du grunted and skimmed through the report she'd given him. "What's the status on that transponder trace I ordered?" he asked.

Looking abashed, Dini produced a small, rectangular black box from her belt and presented it for Du to see. Frayed wires dangled from the box's mouth. The box's casing bore tiny, distinctive teeth markings, particularly around its leads. "We just found it, sir. It was under one of the trucks."

A vicious curse exploded in Du's mind. He wisely kept it from his lips, and returned to the report Dini had handed him. Halfway into the folder, he blinked, reread a paragraph, and grew more furious still. "Dini, I asked for a sit-rep on the Team Possible situation. This is…?"

She nodded. "Yes, sir. I was there myself. An assailant matching Stoppable's description successfully penetrated our defenses at Eighteen Thirty-Two hours. He neutralized our defenses and made off with one of the impounded weapons."

The impossible report scrolled past Du's eyes. He read each word twice, mouthing them with slackened jaw. According to the Evidence Locker's sentries, Stoppable had attacked and humiliated them a half-hour after Du and the Director had begun directly observing him walking home.

"Who else has seen this report, Agent?" he demanded.

Dini looked confused. "Sir, no one. I only had time to finish it between moments here. All local forces were called in to assist, so I haven't even had time to file it with Central—"

"And the rest of Echo-Lambda's compliment?"

"Infirmary, sir. Many still unconscious." Dini's face filled with shamed embarrassment. "I believe the Stoppable boy went easy on me because he found me attractive…sir."

Du closed the folder snappishly. "Agent Dini, as of now, the contents of this report and the events it describes at Echo-Lamba-Zero-Four are classified. You are not to speak of it to anyone. Understood?"

"Sir!"

"I'm reassigning you to the field as my personal adjunct, effective upon completion of the following." Cold solemnity radiated from his look, quelling the young woman's excitement at the prospect of field work. "You make this afternoon disappear. No one talks. Once you've passed the orders and sealed the files, you report to me. We have a pair of renegade civilians who need to learn what 'Global Justice' really means."

"Sir! Yes, sir!" Dini saluted, her shiner crinkling under the force of her smile. Then she zipped off to make a devastating and humiliating breach of security vanish.

Once she'd left, Du opened the report folder again. The only remaining proof of Stoppable's doppelganger sat weightily in his palm. He tucked the report into his flak jacket, and stood in contemplation of his next move. "You won't escape, my Jabberwock," he murmured. "Through borogroves and tulgey wood, I will hunt you. I'll make you pay."

Another agent interrupted his monologue with a nervous, "Sir!" Du glanced over his shoulder at one of his younger Intelligence agents, which he'd called onto the scene to add some competence to the Doctor's Tactical bunglers. He looked younger than Du ever recalled being himself as he handed Du a grainy photo. "I thought you would want to see this immediately. We began breaking down the flight recording of the Jays on air support today."

Du took the photo printout from the hover jets' recorders and snapped it straight. Then he smiled at the image of silhouetted bodies falling from the rogue jet's open mouth. "Well, well. Welcome to the borogroves, Jabberwock."

"Sir?" the confused agent asked.

* * *

Exhausted and decades older, Kim leaned back in her pilot seat and stared at the comm monitor. Night whistled outside the cockpit at just under the speed of sound. The day's insanity weighed on her eyelids, but she held no illusions that she might fall asleep at the stick. Sleep wouldn't find her for a good, long while. That left her wide awake to watch the most horrible thing she had ever seen on television. 

_"We wish to stress that this was not a foreign act of terrorism,"_ the grave image of Doctor Director assured the viewers of Channel Two News. Microphones surrounded her on all sides to catch her every word like waiting predators. _ "The aircraft over the Tri-City area were Global Justice. The weapons discharge was in full accordance with the authority granted to GJ by the Champion Act. It was never our wish to alarm the populace, and for that, we apologize. We were and are in pursuit of dangerous fugitives who are currently in possession of a dangerous aircraft."_

Kim snorted. "Yeah. Yours."

She traded tired smirks with her copilot, who perched on one tip of her control yoke. Rufus chuckled back, pulling faces at the recorded Doctor Director.

_"Doctor Director!"_ One microphone surged up among the waiting pack. It bumped Doctor Director on the nose as someone off-screen asked, _"Is it true? Are the fugitives you were pursuing actually—?"_

The spymaster grabbed the microphone and shoved the rest aside. _"Let me be perfectly clear,"_ she said, brimming with authority and looking as tired as Kim felt. _"Team Possible is at large. We don't know why, or to what end, but they are aiding and abetting a known terrorist, and should be considered extremely dangerous. If anyone has information regarding their whereabouts, I implore you to contact local authorities immediately. Do not, under any circumstances, confront them or engage—"_

The monitor switched off with a flick of Kim's disgusted thumb. Hours of channel surfing had yielded the same footage from every different angle. Analysts had dissected Team Possible's many adventures to cite the instances of evil that made this "betrayal" an obvious inevitability. Late night talk shows were already snickering about "The Ten Sure Signs You're a Teen Terrorist," (Number One being a distinct and inopportune loss of pants). By morning, every news outlet in the world would carry their faces and the tale of their dastardly and cowardly retreat from Middleton.

Kim couldn't help it. She laughed. "It's just Ron's luck to disappear right after our recognition skyrockets. I bet everyone remembers his name now," she said to Rufus.

Her laughter didn't last long. She lapsed into silence, fiddling with controls that needed no fiddling and checking gauges that did not change. The autopilot thwarted her attempt at keeping busy.

Finally, she locked the controls and pushed out of her chair. "Keep an eye on things up here, Rufus. If anything comes up, just jump on the intercom button and start screaming." She returned his officious salute with a smirk, and then left through the hatch.

Her bare footfalls thudded against the metal deck, which the jet's clockwork thermostat kept at an icy temperature. She had shucked her high heels back at Wade's house. Now she paid the price for it. Worse than cold feet, though, was the emptiness haunting the jet between her muted footfalls. She desperately needed a joke to fill the silence, or better still, reassurance murmured in her ear in the midst of a familiar hug.

The silence made Kim walk a little faster.

She reached the jet's lower level, descending into a small cargo hold connected to the troop compartment. Kim hesitated at the hatch of the compartment. Hours ago, the compartment had dumped half of her friends into the sky, probably to their deaths. But being that the rest of the jet's cramped interior was empty, the process of elimination put the rest of her friends back in that compartment. Kim slapped the hatch control and entered, only to find that laugh she had so desperately needed.

"Child?" Yori called to an open locker over the bench. "Child, please come out." Yori bent to peer into the locker. A note of desperation entered her musical voice.

"No." Hana's disembodied voice stretched the word into two syllables as only a child could.

Kim put her best effort toward stifling her guffaw into a mere snicker. The amusement pulled Yori's attention from her negotiation. Her note of desperation became one of relief. "Kim-san," she sighed.

"I've got us locked on course and on autopilot," Kim said. She tried and failed to keep a straight face. "Is everything here, um, okay?"

Shoulders slumped, Yori said, "The child refuses to come out of the locker. Nothing I say has coaxed her out, and I am stymied in my efforts to convince her. It took forty-five minutes simply to find her place of hiding."

"Only 'cause I got tired of listening to you yelling for me," Hana's voice said, echoing through the chamber.

Yori looked pleadingly to Kim. "Perhaps together, we might..."

Kim rested a hand on Yori's shoulder. It took all the strength of a butterfly's kiss to ease the harried girl onto a bench. "Take a load off. I've got this one. I've handled Hana before," said Kim.

"Stop talking about me like I'm not here!"

Bemused, Kim faced the open locker with fists on hips. She saw Hana squashed in the tiny space. Folded jumpsuits crumpled underneath her and above her, as though she'd simply burrowed into the clothing. "Well, if you'd come out, I could actually talk to you, now couldn't I?" Kim reasoned.

"Pfft. That's 'handling me?' Weak logical traps? I outgrew those with diapers, Kim."

"Which wasn't all that long ago," Kim reminded her.

"Shut up! I'm not talking to you until you take me home! And don't try to get me out, 'cause you never will." Hana stuck out her tongue and braced her arms and legs against the locker's sides.

"Okay." Kim shrugged. She stepped back and opened the equipment locker opposite Hana's, ignoring the confused look Yori aimed her way. She busied herself with rooting through the plethora of GJ hardware.

"…okay?" Hana's voice echoed from her tiny fortress.

"Yup." Kim brightened as she found what she had been seeking, and drew a trio of small, black plastic packages from the locker. "Of course," she added, "when we have to finally ditch the jet, we might just forget you're here."

"…you wouldn't do that."

" You're awfully small, Hana," Kim said graciously. "If we can't see you…well, maybe we won't forget. I sure hope not," she said.

Hana slid out and landed on the bench next to Kim. She punched the older girl in the arm out of sheer frustration. "You better not leave me behind," Hana sulked. "Though I guess that's what you're good at, huh?"

Kim rubbed her arm, where Hana's knuckles were sure to have left a lovely bruise. "Keep up the hitting, and you might as well stay in your little cubby," Kim told her. Then she offered the petulant child one of the three plastic packages. "Here. I know you must hungry, because I'm starving. You open it and—"

"It's got instructions printed on the label," Hana snapped, and snatched the box out of Kim's hands. She marched to the hatch on stubby legs and slapped its control. Unable to slam the space-age door, she stomped loudly into the cargo hold, refusing to look back.

Kim deflated with a sigh, expelling her temporary good humor. She tossed one of the boxes to Yori and kept the remaining one for herself. "Here," she said. "MRE."

Yori folded her legs beneath her on the bench and set the box on her lap. "Domo," she said, and peeled back the box's filmy lid. Her expression of gratitude fell into poorly disguised disgust at the foil packages inside. "And this is…"

Glancing at the package, Kim answered, "Roast beef and Swiss on rye," She examined her own sandwich, whose wrapper promised her something turkey-like, and then held it out to Yori. "You want to trade? It's pretty good, actually."

"Perhaps, when compared with its packaging." Yori shook her head at the offer of a trade, and opened the end of the foil tube in her box. Cream-colored pus oozed from the open tube at her squeeze. The odor crinkled her nose as her fingers crinkled the foil. "And this would be?"

"Garlic mashed potatoes," Kim said, recognizing them from an earlier bout with indigestion on a past mission. She saw Yori pushing the MRE aside, and said, "You'd better keep your strength up. No good spitting in the face of international good and righteousness on an empty stomach."

Reluctantly, Yori resumed picking at the boxed meal. Her paltry bites seemed to satisfy Kim, who noisily inhaled her own MRE. The process, Yori noted, was vastly expedited once Kim shucked her burdensome manners. "Truthfully, another matter consumes my attention," she admitted.

Flecks of turkey rode in Kim's reply. "I know what you mean," she said. "Six hours ago, I was looking forward to teasing my boyfriend." She gestured down at what remained of her blouse and miniskirt. The battle suit had been gentle on her skin, but less so with her clothes, tearing the skirt up the middle to accommodate her movement, and rending the blouse at the suit's donning and disappearance. "Now some creeps who do a decent Team Possible impression have a ray gun the size of a dump truck. Global Justice has the whole world convinced that we're bad guys. And I just ate a sandwich that tastes like cardboard to avoid the unavoidable likelihood that most of my friends just died, and I'm all alone now."

Yori blinked, and not because the tube of mashed potatoes had violated her taste buds with unspeakable horrors. Not _just_ because of the mashed potatoes, at any rate. "That is quite the collective conundrum. However, I was referring to the budding relationship between yourself and Stoppable-san."

Now Kim blinked. "You seriously want to gossip? Now?"

A tinge of color crossed Yori's cheeks. "You are not the only one in need of distraction at the moment, Kim-san. But if you wish to remain focused…"

"On that pile of sad? As if." Kim's face broadened into a desperately needed smile. "But we've got bigger fish to fry."

"What do you mean?"

Kim tossed aside her empty MRE and returned to the cabinets lining the bulkheads. After a few luckless openings, she drew a folded set of clothes from one of the lockers on the end. She unfurled the stack to reveal a standard black GJ jumpsuit. Further investigation of the locker revealed a purple athletic undershirt (complete with built-in support, for which Kim was silently ecstatic) and simple cotton panties, which Kim would gladly trade for her current, maddening thong.

She looked back at Yori and said, "I'm not going to just sit around and wait for Global Justice to wake up and realize that Team Possible is innocent. I might as well stare at a fossil until it turns into oil. We're going to Boise to check out that new Evidence Locker our doppelgangers made the withdrawal from, and backtrack the real culprits from there. Can I see your sword?"

Yori offered Kim her sheathed katana. "You wish to access a Global Justice facility? I would imagine they will be most uncooperative after your colorful egression from Middleton."

"All the more reason to bring a ninja along," Kim said.

She pulled the katana and tossed the GJ jumpsuit into the air. One quick slice lopped the jumpsuit in half. Kim caught the bottoms and tossed them next to the purple top, leaving the rest of the jumpsuit on the floor. She had already worn Global Justice's uniform once in her life. She refused to do so again, and kicked the black top with its globe patch under the bench.

As Kim began shucking her sultry, tattered outfit, she asked Yori, "That disappearing thing you did with Hana would come in handy, too. Could you teach me that before we landed?"

It was true testimony of Yori's manners that she did not scoff aloud. "The 'disappearing thing' is a tenant of stealth taught only to the most advanced of Yamanouchi's students. It requires months of meditation and training simply to condition one's self to begin the process. It would be highly unlikely that you could master Yamanouchi Stealth in such a short time."

Kim cinched the pants in place with a utility belt she'd scrounged from the locker. She stood before Yori, her transformation complete. Hard jade replaced the look of dancing mirth she'd shared with Yori a moment before during their detestable meal. "Then it's a damn good thing my name isn't Kim Probable. We've got a few hours before touchdown. Try me."

There was not a hint of arrogance in her voice, only boundless confidence and a desperate need to keep busy. Yori had to smile as she stood and bowed. "As you wish, Kim-san."

* * *

The soft muttering of a familiar voice caressed Ron's mind back into consciousness. He was rewarded for his return to the waking world with the single largest headache ever, which turned everything between his ears into a pressurized mass of pain. His eyes opened to searing light. He promptly closed them, and flung his arm over his eyes for good measure, moaning. 

"Ron!" Wade's muttering turned into a joyous shout that pierced Ron's headache like a barbed spear. He pried Ron's arm from his face and hovered over him. "You're awake!" When Ron tried to close his eyes, Wade's pudgy thumbs forced one open, assaulting it with terrible, horrific light from a penlight. "Pupils seem responsive. I don't think you have a concussion."

"Super. Then could you stop manhandling my face?" Ron grumbled. He sat up and rubbed the goose egg seated behind his cowlick. The crates and draped blanket serving as his bed creaked. Blearily, he took in his surrounds, a collection of crates and boxes stacked in a claustrophobic's nightmare of a room. As his vision coalesced, he could read words like "Buns," "Pickles," and "Kosher!" on several of the containers. "Okay. I skipped a scene somewhere. Weren't we falling?" he asked.

Wade sat down heavily beside him. Under the light of the single bulb, Ron could see the afterglow of terror glisten on Wade's face. Dirt clung to his clothes, face, and hair. "You managed to save us after we fell out of the jet," Wade explained. "Your suit absorbed the impact, but you were knocked out, and we weren't much better."

The room's only door creaked open, allowing a portly blond in a battered fishing cap to back through. He carried a tray with a steaming bowl and a roll of bandages. A clean cloth hung over his arm. "Which is when I found the lot of you," Uncle Don piped in. "I heard what sounded like a meteor hit a few blocks from the store, so I ran out to see what it was. Imagine my surprise when I find a little boy and a lovely young woman dragging your lazy carcass out of a crater in the road."

Ron was about to retort when his uncle's words jogged his memory. He looked around wildly. "Monique?"

Don stepped aside, allowing Monique to shuffle past. She was in a terrible state. Her shirt hung open and in tatters, covered with the same black dirt that mucked Wade's clothes. Pieces of pavement twinkled in her frizzy hair, which exploded from the back of her scalp uncontained. Worst, though, was her cast; a long, broad crack ran the length exposing puffy red flesh. Her bone had come unset, twisting her soft features with silent pain.

"I did the best I could," Don said with an apologetic look to her cast, "but she needs to see a doctor."

"That's the quickest way back into GJ custody," said Wade.

"Well, maybe you should have thought of that before you went for a walk at nine thousand feet," Uncle Don retorted angrily. He whirled on his nephew and slammed the tray of medicine down on the crate, and began swabbing at Ron's face with the warm cloth, all the while ranting, "Honestly, where do you find time to get in such trouble, Ronald? I just saw you four hours ago, and now you're a wanted criminal. Your father is going to be beside himself when he hears—"

The rolling of Ron's eyes as he ignored his uncle's tirade turned into another look around their surroundings. Something obvious and terrifying finally occurred to him. Fighting the urge to panic, he said, "Where's Kim? Hasn't she found us yet?"

The room lapsed into uncomfortable silence. Wade stepped forward, fidgeting, and said, "We don't know what happened to Kim."

Ron pushed aside his uncle's attempts with the cloth. "Well, let's give her a call already. Sheesh, you didn't need me conscious for that." He reached for his wrist, and found it devoid of its Kimmunicator.

Wade's brow creased. He pulled the missing Kimmunicator from his pocket. "It's no good. Global Justice has instigated a communications blackout over the Tri-City area. They've blacked out every signal over our heads and commandeered every hard line."

The explanations bounced off Ron's stubborn wall of denial. He lifted the watch from Wade's fingers and thumbed the knob on its side. A screen of pure light appeared above his hand. "So just hack the server, or crack the code, or sic Smokey the Bear on their firewall, or whatever it is you do. We'll call—"

"Ron," Wade said slowly, "We're shut down. There are no satellite signals left to pirate. They've all been jammed. All of the hard phone lines are being watched. You can't even use a HAM radio without getting the GJ hairy eyeball. Why do you think we're squatting in a storeroom?"

"You're welcome," Don muttered ungraciously.

"Then what do we do now?" Ron snapped, throwing his hands up in the air.

Wade glanced between Don and Monique, who had slumped down against a stack of boxes in silence. Then he turned back to Ron, and murmured, "We were hoping you knew."

Ron's panic dawned into abject horror while, as of that moment, he became the de facto _Kim_ of the present Team Possible. Wade and Monique were counting on him for answers that he knew for a fact he didn't have.

Uncle Don shook his head. He gently closed his nephew's gaping jaw, and said, "You kids look like you could use a nosh. All this recklessness and treason must work up an appetite. Wade, would you give me a hand out front? I think we can whip up a few sandwiches."

At Don's gentle hand, Wade followed him out the stockroom door. This left Ron alone with his thoughts and a somber Monique. Neither proved illuminating to his dilemma. He picked up the bowl of warm water and the rag, and masked a long sigh in the damp cloth. As the sigh ended, he heard a faint sniffling, and drew his face from the cloth. "Monique?"

Monique sat with her legs to her chest. Her forehead rested on her knees as her shoulders shook. Tiny moans and sobs escaped the frazzled shock of hair blanketing her head. When Ron sat down next to her, she lifted her head and looked at him with glistening, bloodshot eyes. Only then did Ron notice the heavy bags beneath her eyes. "Ron, I can't do this," she whispered shakily. "I can't."

Uncertain, Ron rested a hand on her shoulder. Up close, the split in her cast looked even nastier. She could hardly move her arm, and gasped with pain every time she did so. "Mon, it's okay. We're alive. That's always a good first step, right?"

"I can't do this anymore," Monique moaned. She sobbed once, softly, and then drew a long, shaking breath. Tears stained her cheek unchecked. "Ron, I got shot today. I got dropped out of a plane. And nobody can give me one good reason why."

Ron felt her tremble beneath his touch. He slid his hand back and held it up, dipping to meet her gaze. "Monique—"

"I got shot!" She cried as though realizing what her words meant. Her good hand fell to her chest, where the last of a pink scar faded into mocha tone. "I got… I felt cold, and I couldn't breathe. Everything got dark." Her eyes rose to his, wide, shimmering, afraid. "I was dying."

Ron bit his lip and looked away. He searched for a joke. A quip. Anything to escape her eyes drilling into the back of his shaggy head. But Monique's sob killed his voice. His mouth flapped at her shaking shoulders. His stomach fell. With nothing left to do, he reached over to touch her broken cast, and murmured, "I'm sorry."

Scarlet light seeped through Monique's tears. Her whole arm burned with cold fire. Startled, she jerked her head up to see the light fading from the crack in her cast. The light faded last from Ron's palm, which he drew away quickly.

Monique blinked her eyes clean and rotated the arm. She stared in wonder as she pulled at the cast's crack, tearing the whole cast off in a spray of plaster. A completely healthy arm waited below.

Her eyes doubled in size as they rose to Ron's apologetic face. "Wha…what did you do?" She scrambled back until she struck the far wall. Her healed arm supported her weight without complaint. "What did you do?" she all but shrieked.

Ron's apology soured. "The short answer is 'magic.' The long answer is at least three stories long, and I'd probably need hand puppets to do it justice anyway."

A fearful tremble shook Monique's voice as Ron splashed water on his face. "You…you're magic? You can do magic? That's…"

"Impossible?" Ron almost cracked a smile. "I'm not even sure what that word means anymore." He watched Monique cower in the corner. His stomach churned at the expression on her face. It was the exact expression he had always feared to see in someone he cared about. "Look, if you're worried about demons coming for your soul, you can relax. It isn't that kind of magic. Besides, I haven't seen any demons since KP and me were checking out Miskatonic U in Massachusetts. Lousy football team, but the food was to die for—"

"STOP JOKING!" Monique screamed. She clutched her heaving chest, tears streaming down her face. "I almost died! How can you joke about that? Do you think this is funny? How—"

"Mon." Ron's soft voice silenced her. She gasped when he stepped toward her, so he held up his hands disarmingly and remained across the room. "Mon, I get it, okay? I'm scared too. And this magic thing is, no offense, leagues scarier for me than it is for you. And I really, really, really, really wish Kim was here, because I need to freak out and lose it in the worst way. But Kim's not here, and the city's crawling with guys who would love to turn me into Cell Block D's new 'Miss Congeniality.' So don't shout at me, okay?"

He spoke so calmly. His voice never raised a note. But even through her tears, Monique could see him struggling to keep himself from crawling out his own throat in a scream that would have emptied him. So she quelled her crying and drew her knees back to her chest in silence.

Wade and Don made a timely entrance into the stockroom, the latter with a stack of sandwiches, the former lightening Don's load as fast as he could swallow. The elder Stoppable glanced between Ron and Monique, and then leveled his cocked brow solely on Ron. "Everything okay in here? I heard shouting."

Flawless faux humor blossomed on Ron's face. "No problems, Unc. Just working out the stress with some therapeutic volume." He took a sandwich from Don's tray and tore it in half with his teeth, barely chewing before the other half went the way of the first. Only when the sandwich reached his stomach did he turn to Wade and asked, "How far does this blackout thing go?"

Wade shrugged. "Umbrella blackout. Everything within sprinting distance of city limits is static. The only thing working right now is GJ short-wave radios, and good luck using those without attracting the wrong kind of attention."

Ron shrugged back as he inhaled another sandwich. Then he took the tray from Don and set it within arm's reach of Monique, careful to move slowly and avoid her eye. "Then we'll just have to scoot out from under the umbrella. You got a car we can borrow, Unc?"

"You know I don't drive, boy. Why pay those prices when I've got two legs that work?"

"Right. Silly me." Ron clapped his hands and rubbed them vigorously. "Okay, Wade. Let's go get transportatively creative. Unc, do you think you can pop your head out and let us know when the coast is clear? And keep Monique back here on the down-low until the stormtroopers skip town. Maybe find her a new shirt, too."

Uncle Don made a big show of rolling his eyes, and said, "Yes, sir. Right away." But he offered Monique a reassuring smile before disappearing out the stockroom door.

Her trembling now a mere shiver, Monique watched Ron and Wade gather themselves for a hasty exit. Wade handed Ron the small badge that was his battle suit and said, "Here. But it won't do much good for a few hours at least, and a full charge won't happen for days. The fusion power cell was totally drained after that stratospheric leisure trip you took."

"You're welcome," Ron replied sweetly. Then he smiled down on Monique as if the words they had shared had never happened. "Stay here and stay low. GJ won't put up much fuss looking for you, especially if they wind up chasing us. Heck, if we're lucky, they thing we're halfway around the world with KP by now."

His casual tone almost broke her. "But…but…"

"Relax," Ron said, still smiling. "Far as you're concerned, the worst is over. We'll see you in a couple days. Tacos on me."

Wade echoed Ron's smile. "See ya, Monique. Stay safe."

And just like that, they left the room, abandoning Monique to the safe anonymity of a family-owned deli stockroom. She slumped against the wall and stared at the tray of food they had left for her. She was famished, but couldn't eat. Her stomach flopped in fear, but her chest and arm overpowered it with cold, burning guilt.

* * *

_"First, you must quell the sounds of your body, your clothing, and your movement. Each motion must be made with care. When you must make a noise, first pause, and listen to the natural sound of your surroundings. Time your noise to be masked in that sound. This requires rhythm."_

Kim kept Yori's instructions looping through her mind as she led the young ninja into the abandoned barn that served as a façade to Global Justice's secret base. Clean straw covered the floor in a pattern too neat to be authentic. Bales of untouched hay sat in the loft, covered in dust but pristine otherwise. Tools painted to look rusty hung on the wall opposite the big door. An old tractor sat in the middle of the floor, covered in dust like the hay bales. It clearly hadn't moved in months.

Her breath passed in measured draws and ebbs through a slight part in her lips. She swept her watch in an arc before her, and then drew it to her chest. Its face lit in lieu of its more impressive holographic display, just as she'd programmed it to do beforehand, and guided Kim with a simple green compass that led her, not north, but to an innocuous patch of straw beside the tractor.

Kim held her breath and listened. Outside the barn, the night life of Idaho was in full swing. The occasional owl hooted in hunger. In the distance, a lone car skirted the edge of audibility. It had problems with its carburetor, Kim could tell. And the local crickets serenaded each other in toe-tapping chirps.

She nodded her head to the crickets' beat, and then swept her foot in time. The straw brushed aside. Even Kim had trouble hearing it move. She saw Yori's approving smile flash in the night.

A small hatch sat beneath the straw, painted to match the dirt floor. A minuscule keypad was melded with the ground beside it. Kim waved her watch over the keypad, letting her new Kimmunicator do the work for her. The hatch clicked once. Kim bit her lip and waited a moment. Nothing happened.

She drew the hatch up in tune to the crickets and shimmied into the dark shaft underneath. Something in the back of her head buzzed as she descended the metal ladder. She heeded the hunch, and moved slowly, softly, making no noise at all. A quiet, almost imperceptible thrum filled the underground complex, giving Kim a metronome by which to measure her steps on the ladder.

They lingered at the bottom of the shaft, which opened into a corridor below them. Kim tapped her Kimmunicator's side until it became a scanner. She waved her wrist at the open shaft below, and then checked; the watch face told her they were alone; it also warned her of two anomalous electrical signatures in the corridor, probably security cameras.

_"Next, you must eliminate your visual aspects. You are aware of the basics: muted colors, moving outside of notice, and the like. What you must master is subtle movement that does not stir attention. It is gradual, organic, blending into the background. Provide a change so subtle that it is not worth noticing. This requires patience."_

Slowly, slowly, Kim lowered a single eye around the bottom edge of the shaft. Her hair coiled around her neck to stay aloft, her muscles tensed around the ladder, Kim descended in increments too small and slow to measure. Her spying glimpsed the cameras in the corridor, one in the middle, one at the end, both built into the ceiling.

Kim's hand descended with a speed scoffable to snails. Rufus rode on her palm, frozen, as Kim pressed him to the corridor's ceiling. No words were needed. Rufus knew what to do.

The mole rat pushed his amorphous body into a long, thin pseudopod that clung to the ceiling's microscopic metalwork impurities. He crossed the ceiling as a pencil-thin stream, with teeth, eyes, nose, claws, and whiskers floating along at odd intervals. Rufus reached the mid-corridor camera and poured himself into its seams. Seconds later, a Rufus tendril emerged from the camera and stretched to the second camera at the far intersection.

Kim held her breath and waited. Her body trembled with the effort of remaining still and upside down. Finally, the red light of each camera blinked out simultaneously.

_"Next is speed. To avoid notice, you must be swift in thought and deed. Recognize or create opportunity, and then seize it. Move at a moment's notice, only to become still and calm in the next moment. This requires cunning and stamina."_

Kim dropped from the shaft and landed without sound. Her feet had barely touched the metal decking before she sprinted forward, leaving Yori room to drop and follow. Her ears combed the intersection ahead for any stray passersby, and heard none. Inside of three seconds, she and Yori pressed themselves against the wall of the intersection, out of sight of the two cameras. Rufus drew out from the cameras, allowing them function once more. With luck, the agents watching the camera feeds would believe the corridor had suffered a glitch in its power grid.

The pair traded satisfied nods with one another as Rufus congealed on the wall beside them. Then disaster struck in the form of approaching footsteps. Horrified, Kim looked around, but there was nowhere to go but back into the shaft, past the again-active cameras. Instead, she looked to Yori. Unspoken support radiated from her almond eyes.

Kim took a deep breath, centered herself, and then stood absolutely still.

"—can't believe these tech guys," a deep voice around the corner complained.

Two agents rounded the corner and walked toward Kim's intersection. Rifles shouldered, they walked with military ease, clearly bored with their patrol. "I know, right?" the other agent said. "A camera blinks because they can't keep up with repairs, and we have to come running? Like anyone would be dumb enough to break in here again."

Kim focused every iota of concentration she had toward her center. The pit of her stomach squirmed with forces she didn't quite comprehend.

_"The last is far more difficult than the first three masteries of stealth. You must harness your ki, the center from which all life flows, and contain it. This requires control."_

Sweat pearled on Kim's brow as the agents walked right at them. Step by step, they drew upon the hapless intruders frozen on the intersection wall. Primal impulses of fight and flight screamed in Kim's head. She ignored both. She kept her focus on her center, pumping all her anxiety and fear back into her core self.

_"Ki responds to emotion and thought, and vice versa. You must control every aspect of your mind and your soul. Others' ki, even untapped and untrained, will respond to yours. It is the presence you feel when another being stalks you. It is the bond you feel in the company of a friend, and the ache you feel when wholly alone. Be not the bond, but the ache. Become absence."_

The agents kept walking right past Kim. They turned to the empty entry corridor. The barrel of one shouldered rifle swung less than an inch from Kim's forehead. She watched it waggle as its owner scorned, "There. No black ops teenagers here."

His partner snorted. "I know, right? I almost wish those kids would come back. You seen a picture of that Possible?"

"First day of training. Everyone's seen her dossier."

"Yeah. Nice, right?" The agent's eyebrows waggled.

Disgust spiked in Kim, disrupting the squirming ball of pseudo-theological conundrum that had supplanted her stomach. She gasped with effort and doubled her concentration.

The agent in front of her whirled around. His visored eyes drilled into her, sharp, narrow, darting to and fro. It was all Kim could do to hold on. Sweat poured down her face as she tensed her muscles and thought of nothing but nothingness.

His partner frowned. "Is something wrong with the wall?" he asked sarcastically.

"No," the agent said slowly, unconvinced. "No, I just thought… No. Nothing."

The other agent slapped his arm before leading him down the other corridor of the intersection. "Ha! Looking for redheads in sexy battle suits? If only."

"Don't you have a daughter her age?"

"And a girlfriend in her sorority. So what? Besides, Red's legal now."

They rounded the corridor in the nick of time. Kim felt revulsion power through her, spoiling her concentration the moment they'd gone. She wiped a curtain of sweat from her brow and leaned back against the wall. "Whew. Glad that worked. Also? Yearg to the nth degree," she whispered.

When she turned to Yori, the young ninja was again visible, and agog. She stared openly as Kim collected Rufus from the wall. "Kim-san, you…"

"You and Rufus are lucky," Kim said, kneading Rufus at the scruff of his neck affectionately. "You both have this inviso-mojo down. It'll take me a few more tries before I can do it that easily. Pretty neat, though."

"It is astonishing," said Yori. She skulked behind Kim down the corridor from which the guards had come. "I was certain we would be forced to incapacitate the guards. How did you master ki control so quickly?"

Kim tossed a quizzical look over her shoulder, the only look she could spare from her constant survey of their surroundings. "What do you mean? You, Ron, and Rufus can all do the vanishing thing. Just because I'm not a ninja…"

Yori's response had to wait. Both their attuned senses detected footfalls ahead of them.

Kim called forth the layout she had memorized hours ago and led Yori in silent circumnavigation of the underground complex. It wasn't as large as other GJ facilities Kim had frequented, but it had more than its fair share of guards. It took Kim half an hour and too much doubling back before she stood at the cusp of the Locker's vault. The guards standing at the vault doors were among GJ's finest, but their training hadn't prepared them for two women in control of their ki.

A shaky breath rattled past Kim's teeth as she unclenched her center. She rubbed her fist and looked down at the guards slumbering at her feet. Petty satisfaction tingled in her knuckles. She didn't entirely like the feeling, and buried it beneath her examination of the massive vault door before them.

Yori reappeared at her side, also sizing up the door. "Can you disable it, Kim-san?"

A wave of her Kimmunicator watch produced disheartening news. "I don't know what they're feeding their doors, but this one must be getting extra helpings. Kimmunicator says it'll take a few minutes to hack. A patrol will pick us up by then."

"Judging by their pattern, another patrol will be back in roughly two point four eight minutes." Kim and Yori jumped at the tiny whisper by their knees, and looked down to find pajama-clad Hana scrutinizing the door's sophisticated keypad. "And that's not accounting for variable speed or occurrences, so it might be less."

Kim's jaw clenched. She grabbed Hana by the hips and hauled the little girl to eye level. "Hana, what are you doing here? How did you follow us?" she hissed.

Hana glared coolly at Kim. "Hero-sized air vents. Duh. I had some trouble when you and Yori turned 'nvisible, but then I remembered where you were going, and just waited until you got here." She pointed overhead to an open grate hanging from the ceiling.

"You should not have come, child." Yori spoke softly with the concern Kim was to angry to express. "It is dangerous here."

"You're not the boss of me. Ron is," Hana said smugly. "Too bad you didn't turn around to get him. I would have listened to Ron."

Hana never knew how truly lucky she was that day, for only by the thinnest of margins did Kim's love and patience beat out her furious reaction. "You will stay close, and you will stay silent," she told Hana in a dark voice. When the little girl's mouth opened to retort, Kim added, "or I will break your little arms and legs, and I will wear you like a backpack. A gagged, bound, miserable little backpack whose big brother will kill her for coming into a secure government facility where they will shoot her on sight. And I won't be gentle with my backpack. Get me?"

Tears rimmed Hana's wide eyes. "O-one point e-eight minutes," she whispered.

Groaning, Kim set her aside and dug into her pocket. Rufus scampered up her arm and perched on her shoulder. When he saw Hana, he squeaked in surprise, and jabbered at Kim as he jabbed a claw at the new addition to their team.

"Yeah," Kim said shortly, "I noticed. Could you open the door, Rufus? I'd love it if we weren't gunned down in Idaho."

Rufus eyeballed the keypad and then leapt from Kim's shoulder. His outline spread and enveloped the whole pad. He clung to the keys, seeping around them to access the circuitry directly. His entourage watched with a mixture of admiration and disgust as his body depressed, pushing a sequence into the keypad beneath him. When he peeled away, the whole door clanked and swung inward.

Kim pulled him off the door and stepped inside. Her other hand snaked out and caught Hana's wrist, dragging the girl none too gently over the lip of the door. Once Yori was through, she caught the thick door's edge and swung it shut as softly as she could, hoping it would be enough to keep the approaching patrols from noticing.

The vault's interior was a compact warehouse crafted from the same polished gunmetal as the rest of the complex. Dim emergency lighting trickled through the space, which was now empty of the boxes and crates Kim had seen on the video, evidently moved to a more secure locale. The gaping hole the thieves had blasted through remained. Dark earth lay beyond the blast hole. The thieves had tunneled in and then collapsed the tunnel on their way out.

Deep shadows poured over Kim as she entered the room. Her boots clicked on the floor, echoing off the high ceiling. She circled the space in silence until her back faced the hole. Closing her eyes, she recalled the security footage in her mind, and then tapped her Kimmunicator.

Yori stood at the door with a hand on Hana's shoulder. "Kim-san, we should search in haste. Even with Rufus-san's skilled countersecurity, they will undoubtedly detect us here soon."

"Shh." Kim began to follow the path their doubles had taken with her Kimmunicator low to the ground. Her movements became muted reflections of those of the faux Kim and Ron. She swept gracefully across the floor, eyes closed. Her brows knit as she echoed their violence in her mind, imagining her fists and feet driving through Global Justice personnel.

It felt as though she were compounding a lie, breaking into Global Justice to prove she had never broken in. Each step brought her into faux Kim's shoes. She imagined her way through the robbery, and felt disgusted as she found that the faux Kim had made the same choices she would have made.

Finally, her Kimmunicator beeped twice. She stopped and opened her eyes as the holo-screen manifested above her wrist. She swept her vision across the floor, looking through the screen, following its direction until she zeroed upon a single hair follicle. With a pair of tweezers found in her utility belt, she plucked the hair from the dust and held it up. "Jackpot," she said, and laid the hair across her watch face. The glowing face flashed brighter as it combed the follicle for clues.

Though much of her spite had been cowed, Hana managed a scornful little sneer. "Do you really think one hair is going to tell you what you need to know?" she asked.

"Only if we're lucky," Kim said.

The vault door clanked and clanged, its locking mechanism releasing noisily. Yori grabbed Hana and darted from the door to take position next to Kim. Her free hand rested on the hilt by her shoulder.

Kim glared at the opening door. Her hands balled into fists. "Right. Of course we aren't lucky," she said.

* * *

"Hold the light steady." 

"Work faster."

Wade pulled his head out from under the dash of the sleek convertible parked outside of the old apartment complex down the road from Don's deli. His tow-headed light stand returned his glare with an irritated look. "Ron, I can't see straight unless you keep the flashlight in place. So quit jiggling!"

"You quit jiggling," Ron retorted childishly. He stood outside the cherry red sports car with a small flashlight he'd borrowed from his uncle. "Besides, shouldn't you be able to hotwire this thing upside down and blindfolded? I thought you were a twelfth-level intellect or something."

"Ron, this thing has a sophisticated onboard computer, key recognition, and RoadStar off-site security and assistive service. I have to bypass all of that, or this car will lock down and call the police the minute we try to start the engine. It's a little harder when you don't have tools. So shut up, hold the light steady, and stop making obscure comic book references."

Ron exhaled his impatience. "You get bitchy when you're a fugitive," he said.

He looked up at his former home with a pang. It felt wrong to steal a car, and more so when the car belonged to one of his old neighbors. But the topless convertible was the closest vehicle with easy access. He had to suck it up and hope that Old Man Schweitzer had good insurance.

His attention drifted from grand theft auto to a window on the building's second floor. The window looked newer than its neighbors, and for good reason. Ron had been present when its predecessor had been blown apart along with the rest of the apartment by an explosive left by Monkey Fist. The apartment's renovation was almost done, but Ron doubted that he and Kim would move back. They hadn't talked about it, and the politely worded petition their neighbors had circulated against their return had contained some excellent points.

_Where are we gonna live? Are we even gonna live together?_ Ron hadn't considered that. Mister Doctor Possible had been in favor of Ron as his daughter's roommate before, but now the situation had considerably changed. Would they have to get separate places? In just two months, provided they managed to clear their names, he and Kim would be back in school and, provided he didn't blow it, they'd be juggling school and dating and freak-fighting all at once. _I'm barely a passable boyfriend without the other two things_, Ron remarked reproachfully.

"Ron! Light!"

Ron snapped back to reality and straightened his flashlight. He had another retort ready, but bit it back when a duet of engines twisted his gaze down the street. As pair of black jeeps marked with white globes advanced on them. Before Ron could think to react, the jeeps screeched to a stop around the red convertible. Four headlights bathed Ron in harsh, angry light, forcing his hand to his eyes.

Engrossed in his work, Wade grunted, "Better, thanks."

The jeep doors opened, unloading armored agents faster than Ron could count. They surrounded the car with their rifles, pistols, and nasty underslung grenade launchers all leveled between Ron's shrinking pupils.

Their leader, a youthful woman with a swishing blonde ponytail and a black eye, stepped forward and charged her rifle with a pump of its handle. "Ronald Stoppable, Wade Load, you are under arrest for numerous acts of treason, assault, and larceny. Any resistance will be met with deadly force. Oh," Dini added snidely, waggling her rifle at Ron's wrist, "thanks for using your little communicators. We caught the attempt and homed right in on the signal."

As Ron lifted his hands, the convertible behind him rumbled. Wade wriggled out from under the dash with a victorious cheer. "Ha! I am a criminal mastermind! Let's roll!" His happy face folded when he looked past Ron to the row of weapons staring them down. His hands joined Ron's in the air. Slowly, he said, "By which I mean, 'let's roll this clearly stolen vehicle back to its rightful owners.' And thank you, Ron, for letting me know the fuzz was here."

"Always happy to help," Ron said. Then, through the side of his nervous smile, he muttered, "Will the battle suit still pop with no juice?"

"That's about all it will do," Wade muttered back from a similar smile. "Why? Plan on dying stylishly?"

Ron answered with the four most terrifying words Wade could have heard at that moment: "I have a plan."

Quicker than the chill up Wade's spine, Ron drew and slapped the badge to his chest. Every gun in the row of GJ agents clacked as Ron's blurring form became their target. Dini threw a hand and bellowed, "Hold your fire!" She stepped forward to face the suited Ron, who squared off against her with hands on hips.

"Ha! Aw, too bad, Globie. Game over." Ron cackled, throwing back his head. "What are you gonna do, shoot me? These threads eat fire and crap thunder! Or…something. Whatever. The important point to focus on here is that I'm awesome and you're screwed."

He strutted the length of the agents' line, which began to buckle. Those agents present for the battle at the Load house lowered their guns and looked to Dini in trepidation. They knew what a Team Possible battle suit could do firsthand. None of them were eager for reminding. "Ma'am?" one of them asked the scowling Dini.

Ron stopped in front of Dini and waggled his finger. "C'mon. You saw what we did to your little stormtroopers on my man Wade's lawn. You've got, what? Eight guys with standard issue GJ peashooters? I tell you what," he said sportingly. "I'll give you all thirty seconds to pile back into your little clown cars and vamoose. Then I'm gonna track you all down and play Global Justice Jenga. I know, I know," he said, open-palmed, "I'm getting soft, right? But what the hell. I'm a sucker for the cute ones."

Something about the word "cute" twisted Dini's face with rage. She aimed her rifle square at Ron's chest and bellowed, "Light him up!"

Blue light glimmered in Ron's wide eyes. "Well, shit," he breathed.

* * *

The boy waited, agitated, impatient, sitting with his back against unpainted drywall. It had been a simple matter to break into the unfinished Apartment Twenty-Six without being spotted. The difficulty lay in escaping the unwelcome memories he found while waiting for Shego to arrive. 

Hours passed while he mentally constructed the old apartment in the barren space. Over there, he placed the counter where he had cooked and eaten breakfast every Sunday morning, no matter how much homework they'd had. There, further back, would have been the couch they had spent so much time together hiding from the winter cold under the same blanket. Two doors in the far wall led to his bedrooms.

Shego thought that picking this old apartment for their rendezvous was funny. He didn't see anything funny about it. He didn't joke about the _others_. Once, he had considered them an inheritance. They were a past bestowed upon him from the Before. Now, after his father's revelation, he knew better. He knew what the _others_ were, and had only one thing left to do before he could rightfully claim his name.

But even still, the memories troubled him. Here in the apartment, so close to _them_, he felt more alone than ever before. Something was missing. He didn't know what, or how to fill its void. When he pondered his emptiness, his thoughts invariably led to the _others_. Were they the answer? Were they the cause?

His existentialism lapsed into tense silence at a commotion coming from the street below the window. He crept along the wall and edged his vision around the sill in time to catch a bright blue flash. Then he saw a dark shape rise meteorically toward him, riding a contrail of plasma. He rolled aside, ducking at the shower of glass and splinters the dark shape brought with it in its crash through the window.

The boy unfurled and straightened his wig, staring in shock at the smoldering figure sprawled on the unfinished floor. He rose and rushed to the figure's side, rolling him over carefully. The figure's chest throbbed with red and char in the smoking gaps of a shimmering black suit. Strands of blond vanished into ash with the afterheat of his flight. Freckles danced on twitching cheeks as the figure roused dizzily.

"Ron?" the boy whispered.

"Uhhn," moaned Ron. He tried to align his eyes on the shape above him. From the looks of things, he had landed under a mirror. "Think I oversold it." As he sat up on his elbows, he examined his overhead reflection. Contrary to the agony in his chest, his reflection appeared fine, if wearing different clothes and a thunderstruck expression. Then Ron squinted, examining his worried reflection further. "What the hell? They shot me so hard, my eyes changed color…"

Screams pierced the new drywall. Boot steps pounded up the stairwell down the hall. The boy froze, glancing between the direction of the soldiers' advance and the slagged Ron Stoppable. His father had spoken of the _others_ with fervent venom. But when the boy looked at Ron, he felt such a surge of affection, of unconditional love, that his body began moving before he made his mind to the task.

He seized Ron by the armpits and dragged him to the unfinished coat closet. With no door to conceal him, the boy scrounged a painter's tarp from the corner. "Don't worry, Ron," he heard himself say amidst his inner turmoil, "they wont find you."

"Uppity mirror," Ron slurred before the tarp covered him completely.

The boy backed away from the closet mere seconds before the apartment door flew from its hinges. Cracked by a boot that led in Agent Dini and her readied rifle. Both Dini and the rifle found the boy at once. The light mounted beneath its barrel shined in the boy's face. More agents piled in behind Dini as she barked, "Stoppable!"

Squinting, the boy recognized Dini fondly. "Hey, you're that cute coffee girl. Knob, right? How's the eye?"

Dini swept her light over his body, which bore not a scratch from their previous volley. "How in the hell did you switch clothes so fast?"

He answered with a grenade prestidigitated from his coat. Smoke plumed between him and the agents, covering his rush to the broken window. Dini staggered through the smoke to see with teary eyes his rakish salute before he fell backward out the window.

She couldn't help it. Dini shook her head and muttered, "What the hell is he made of?" As she herded her men back out the door, she failed to hear the tarp in the closet's wracking cough.

* * *

Hana screamed as Yori snatched her up and leapt over the staccato plasma sweep that heralded a wave of agents rushing into the vault. The air sizzled beneath Yori, rippling as she landed and rolled, keeping the terrified Hana wrapped in her protection. 

Kim heard Hana's scream as she corkscrewed above the burst fire. Her vision went red. She landed and leapt again, this time landing on the lead agent's rifle. She kicked his partner's gun from his hands and yelled, "Hold your fire! She's four years old!"

The two agents ducked, allowing six agents behind them to open fire. Kim flipped back, furious, hardly feeling a plasma bolt chew through her clothes and nick her skin. These agents didn't care who was caught on their battlefield. They had lost face in the last week, and now some teenager—seemingly the same from before---had broken into their secure facility. Warnings were a thing of the past. Now it was open warfare.

Global Justice agents poured through the door as though a floodgate of faceless, visored soldiers had been unleashed. Tens, dozens, their ranks swelled. Within seconds, Kim and Yori would have no room to dodge or even think of escape.

Soaring between leaps, Kim ripped Rufus from her pocket. "Rufus," she exclaimed," landing in a crouch and losing precious hair to a near miss, "door!"

She tossed Rufus on her next leap. The pink putty rodent yowled as he mixed into the plasma blanketing the air. He sailed unnoticed over the flood of agents and struck the wall near the vault's interior control panel. Discarding his shape, he oozed down the wall and into the panel. Sparks and numbered buttons flew out as Rufus made havoc of sensitive electronics.

The vault door began swinging back to its housing amidst a red wash of emergency alert lighting. Agents scrambled ahead or behind the massive door, which stemmed the flood of agents with a resounding clang that sealed the room. A klaxon blared, deafening the agents to their own cries of outrage as their support vanished, leaving them with paltry thirteen-to-one odds.

Thriving in the confusion, Kim synchronized her acrobatics with Yori's. They kept to the center of the agents' expanding formation, forcing the agents to choose between a hand-to-hand fight or the substantial risk of shooting themselves. They abandoned their firearms in favor of stubby shock sticks with glowing ends.

"Is she okay?" Kim asked Yori in mid-flight.

Hana's sobbing cut both of them between each howl of the klaxon. "She is unharmed," Yori said, fighting to keep her breathing organized under the strain of talking and evading for two. "Such will not be the case if we remain."

Kim nodded. "Here's the plan," she said.

A polished black shock stick struck Kim across the chest, knocking her horizontal. Her back slammed into the metal decking as the club's glowing end plunged into her stomach. Her scream cut short as a painful shock seized her body. The agent above her grinned and jabbed his stick into her again. Two more agents crowded around him, waiting for their chance.

Yori stumbled back, struggling with Hana as the girl shrieked Kim's name. Then her vision exploded into twinkling lights at the crack of a shock stick across the back of her skull. Hana tumbled from her grasp. Yori staggered forward with the little girl's name parting her lips, but then arched at the glowing touch of the stick.

Agents collected the spasming teens into handcuffs. One agent bent and scooped Hana from the deck underarm and carried her like a sack. He touched the side of his helmet and bellowed, "Situation in vault is secure. Would somebody cut the noise already?"

As the lights returned to normal, Hana's sobbing became a squall that replaced the absent klaxon. She kicked and screamed and squirmed until the agent was forced to grab her with both hands. Kim watched him manhandle her while five agents wrestled Kim to the deck. "Hana…" she slurred, still immobile from the tasing.

"Someone get that door open," the agent with Hana barked. "and… Will you shut up?" His patience with the frightened fervor in his hands evaporated. He shook Hana violently and matched her screams with his own mocking rendition. "Shut up, you little b—"

Hana's tears turned scarlet. For a split second, Kim forgot her rage, and feared the red flash to be Hana's blood. Then the scarlet filled Hana's wide eyes, her mouth and nose, her hands, her face, her whole body. She vanished into a hellish halo that launched the agent across the room. Those unfortunate agents near him tumbled back as the halo grew, filling the space around Hana. The room vanished in scarlet light, which burned through Kim's eyelids as she flinched and turned.

The light drew back into Hana, physically trickling beneath her skin from whence it came. Hana was left on the floor with her mouth open in silence. Her eyes were enormous and brown. The agents around her rose slowly, their own mouths gaping, their feet reluctant to step any closer to the child.

Kim and Yori had more experience with the impossible, and came to their senses several seconds before the agents. With flurried style, they wheeled to their feet and discarded their handcuffs, standing in a ring of crumpling agents. Both sprinted to Hana as the surprise wore from the agents. Shock sticks chased them in glowing arcs and fruitless swings.

Kim collected Hana on the run and cradled the girl to her chest. She looked to the door and saw a red seam appearing along the door's joint. Global Justice was cutting through its vault door from the other side, and were making good time. Kim also saw a small pink shape clinging to the wall above the door that stared pleadingly at her.

One-handed, Kim shook her Kimmunicator into her hand and tapped its face until the right function icon glowed beneath her thumb. She tossed the Kimmunicator to Yori, who bobbled it. "Get her out of here," she said to Yori, and passed Hana over. "That cutting laser will burn through just about anything, but move fast. I'll cover you. And don't lose that watch."

"Kim-san, wait!"

But Kim had already reversed her course. She charged at the agents chasing them, catching them unprepared with a full counterattack. Her leaping kick bowled through them, breaking their formation into individuals, which Kim knocked with merciless gusto. The remaining agents converged on Kim with no thought to Yori or Hana.

Yori slung the catatonic little girl over her shoulder and donned the Kimmunicator. Tapping its side, she aimed its thin red beam at the collapsed tunnel mouth. The rich soil burned beneath the laser, filling the air with an acrid stench. Sweat dripped from her brow as she guided the laser. At any moment, she expected to fall to one of the shock sticks, but the blow never came. The burning earth at last opened into a dark passage, through which Yori carried Hana.

She turned. She paused. Kim was a blur of fury, ducking and weaving through an ever-waning crowd of agents. Her blows were visible only as effects. Wherever she passed, an agent would collapse, clutching broken bones and blossoming bruises.

Red hair danced behind Kim's violent waltz. The agents swung and cursed, and then fell. Any blow they landed became incidental, an incident for which she repaid the unlucky agent tenfold.

Then the vault door burst inward in a shower of sparks. Fresh GJ agents stormed the vault in a mad rush of battle cries and glowing sticks. They converged on Kim, whose flashing eyes welcomed the challenge, but whose stamina was clearly flagging. The prolonged fight had exacted its toll. The next fight might end her.

"Kim-san!" Yori shouted.

"Seal it," Kim shouted back from behind a wall of agents. "Go. Go!"

The exchange drew several of the new agents toward the tunnel mouth. Squeezing her eyes shut, Yori aimed her laser at the tunnel ceiling and fired. An avalanche of dirt fell over the mouth, forcing Yori to backpedal as the tunnel pinched itself shut. The earth rumbled and shook. Yori continued backward, clutching Hana until the quake ceased. When it did, she stared through the dark at the tonnage that separated her from Kim.

Moonlight trickled through the tunnel from behind her. She turned and spied a shaft of pale light almost a hundred yards of claustrophobia away. Ducking and cradling Hana, she began her worrisome trek toward what would hopefully be their freedom.

* * *

A scowling agent shoved Wade onto the hood of a black jeep and slapped his wrists in cuffs. "I had friends at the old Middleton Command Center, pipsqueak," snarled the agent. "If I find out you bunch had anything to do with that last Cannon business, you won't get the chance to be somebody's plus-sized pincushion." 

Wade's cheek mashed on the hood, slurring his speech. "What a wonderful sentiment about our legal system. Innocent until lynched by a high school grad with Sci-Fi weaponry I helped design."

The agent kicked the back of Wade's knee and sent him to the pavement. "Shut up!"

Then the agent spun, propelled by a punch, then by a kick that knocked him back to the ground. Wade scooted back on his knees to avoid the toppling pillar of meat and armor. Then he felt strong hands lift him from behind. "You know, you really suck at bluffing," Wade groused as he turned around.

He paused, confused. The Ron before him wore mission clothes and a jacket instead of his tattered civvies, and carried a satchel on his shoulder. Ron regarded Wade with the same confusion. He spoke carefully, as though unsure. "Wade?"

"How did you change your clothes? Did they blast you through a magic wardrobe?"

Screams pulled their gaze apart. They looked to the front door, where the building's tenants, dressed in their slumber fineries, ran out of the building in a panic. Over the curlers and shining bald pallets, they spied GJ agents shoving their way through the stampede.

Ron shoved Wade to one side. The handcuffed boy yelped as he struck the curb. "Sorry. I'll be right back," Ron said, and hopped into the jeep.

The jeep started and jolted backward, leaving Wade to worm his way back to his knees. "Hey! Hey!" he shouted after the retreating jeep. "Hey! Ron! You can't just leave me!"

Plasma bursts sizzled over his head. Wade cried and ducked as Dini led her gaggle of agents to the curb. She lowered her smoking gun and bellowed, "Other jeep! After him!" Then she glared at Wade while her agents piled into the remaining jeep. Her gun dipped meaningfully. "If I have to catch you again, you'll get shot," she told him.

"Duly noted," Wade said, and sat heavily upon the curb.

Dini nodded, holstered her pistol, and hastened into the jeep, shoving aside the woman already behind the wheel. The second jeep left smoking rubber behind its leap into pursuit of the waning taillights of its sister vehicle.

Wade sighed and shifted so he wasn't sitting on his hands. His nose itched. The crowd of frightened, confused, groggy, irate tenants behind him shouted questions to each other in a vain attempt to figure out what had happened to their quiet little complex. Wade's headache grew. "That's it," he said. "I'm working for evil from now on."

"Wade?"

Wade shifted at the familiar voice. The crowd before the door parted disdainfully, shooting Ron Stoppable dirty looks as he staggered onto the front walk. His unpowered battle suit bore deep scarring, but the skin beneath it appeared healthy, with a twinkle of scarlet fading from Ron's chest. Ron looked around and found Wade's seat on the third try. He lurched forward to meet Wade.

"Wade, you're okay," Ron said, relieved.

"Ron, you're…here." Wade stood and examined Ron from his red striped boots to his smoky hair. Pieces of his jersey stuck out from the holes in his suit. "Didn't you just drive off? Is this a ninja trick?"

Now Ron looked confused in addition to disoriented. "What? I didn't drive anything. I got blasted and busted. That's not a trick, it's a habit of mine." He glanced down at the insensate GJ agent and then raided his belt for a key with which to uncuff Wade. "What's our sitch?"

Wade had no idea where to begin. Luckily, he didn't have to, for screeching tires answered him from down the street. He and Ron turned to see the first jeep returning to the apartment complex at high speed and minus a headlight. They both stepped back from the curb as the jeep rolled to a stop. Sheared metal stalks were all that remained of its roll cage.

The Ron behind the wheel jumped from his seat and brushed his hands clean. "Well, that was bracing," he said. When he looked up to see Wade's new companion, he froze. That surge of affection he felt was still there, but now a sense of dread overwhelmed it. "Oh, no," he said.

"'Oh, no' is right!" one of the tenants shouted raspily. "One is bad enough! Two of that Stoppable kid is a downright menace!"

"Thanks, Mister Rosenberg," Ron—Wade's Ron—called back. Then he turned to his doppelganger in puzzlement. While the other Ron stood rooted, Ron got the chance to examine him fully. His search stopped when he reached the non-Ron's eyes. "Oh, brother. Y'know, if you're gonna dress up and play Ron, you could at least get the details right."

The non-Ron raised his hands entreatingly. "Don't do this, Ron," he said. "Just find someplace to hide until this is all over. I don't…I don't want to hurt you.."

"And I don't want to hurt you, handsome," Ron replied good-naturedly. "But what makes you think you could get inside a country mile of even touching me?"

His doppelganger didn't blink. "Because I'm more than you," he said.

Ron's eyebrows dipped in annoyance. "Okay, now I want to hurt you."

He launched his fist in a clumsy punch. His pinky knuckle grazed the non-Ron's cheek, smearing the light soot over his freckles. Then Ron's stomach collapsed beneath non-Ron's devastating counterpunch. The blow lifted Ron from his feet. He hung from non-Ron's fist, feeling every breath he'd ever drawn leave his lungs in a whoosh.

Ron stumbled back, clutching his midsection. He glared at the placid non-Ron. "Okay. Right. You're not of the 'mook' variety, then. But you're a far cry from earning your Ronshine, Bright Eyes."

Devouring a fresh breath, Ron rushed his doppelganger, albeit cautiously this time. Non-Ron simply watched him come. The calm boy's hands relaxed at his sides. His eyes betrayed uncertainty, but not fear. Only when Ron's foot came for his head did he move, beginning the most bizarre fight in recorded history.

Wade stared in awe at the nigh identical combatants. If not for the growing anger in his Ron's eyes, he would have sworn they were dancing. Their movements were fluid, graceful beyond anything Wade had ever seen the awkward teen come close to. They became living shadows, snatches of black motion with fair faces and yellow crowns, pure motion bottled in their battlefield. They were precise, fast, and identical.

But then the non-Ron changed his steps. He took to the air at Ron's monkey-like strikes, corkscrewing over his foe's shoulders. His hands sharpened into points that struck Ron in the neck, the arm, and the back. As non-Ron landed, the "real" Ron fell to his knees, gasping in pain.

Ron panted, swallowing his scream as he twisted to see his doppelganger. His arm hung uselessly at his side. "You… Where did you learn my 'fu? And where did you learn that jump?"

Non-Ron considered his counterpart on the ground. Then he smirked. He looked at Ron through new eyes and said, "Your time is over. A real hero is here to step up. Either stand down or I'll put you down, pretender."

"Wow. That wasn't overdramatic in the least." All eyes flew above to the hover car descending upon the gathered teens and frightened tenants. The car lurched to one side as Shego leaned over to grin at her audience. Bountiful hair draped over one eye as she bent toward Ron and said, "Now this is the part where you tell him he'll never get away with this."

"Shego!" Ron yelped. He scooted on his knees to avoid the landing hover car, and wound up on his belly just beyond its edge as it settled onto the pavement. He aimed his glare up, unable to hit either the villainess or his doppelganger. "You're working with Shego? And you say you're the hero? Dude, you're crazy. Also, no Ronshine for you. I'm taking back my face and—"

Non-Ron ended Ron's tirade by stepping on his back to ascend into the hover car. Shego grinned at his brief scowl before leaning back over the car to watch Ron flop onto his back. "Guess I was wrong, Sidekick. You are kind of cute. When you're him. Maybe he can give you pointers after we're running the world."

Ron struggled with his own unresponsive body. The ki points his doppelganger had mashed shut were releasing, but slowly, even with the magic Ron threw behind his efforts. "Hitting the discount bin for Made-In-Taiwan knockoffs, Lady Lime? Didn't know you were so desperate for a partner after Drakken double-crossed you."

She rested a fingertip to her chin in mocking thought. "Gee, that would hurt a lot more coming from the one not squirming on the blacktop like a worm in the rain. See you later, loser. That is, if you and the Tubby Professor can catch us."

The hover car spiraled into the air atop her cackle. Ron reached fruitlessly for the fading car and cried, "You'll never get away with this!" Then he considered his own words, and flopped back onto the pavement, covering his eyes in disgust. "God damn it."

Glimmerings of sensation trickled back into his torso as Wade helped him sit up. The younger boy had trouble lifting him, partly from the battle suit's bulk, and partly from the awe that numbed his limbs still. "Ron, that guy… I don't believe it. He looks just like you. He fought like you!"

Groaning, Ron hunched over his lap. "I noticed," he groused. "Guess we know why GJ thinks we pulled that heist. He's pretty convincing, right down to the way his knuckles click when he knocks the shit out of some poor schmuck." Bitterness swamped his jovial words. He rubbed his jaw with his good hand and waited for his other to begin working again. The muttering of the tenant gallery behind them reminded him of their half-finished escape. "As soon as my legs find my body, we need to am-scray. There's no telling what—"

"**Stoppable**!"

Dini staggered around the corner with murder in her eyes. Her rifle was gone. So too was her composure. Her hair had splayed from its tail as if blown back. The dark bruise around her eye had grown to encompass a large portion of her cheek. One shoulder of her uniform had torn away, revealing a toned, purpling arm. A pistol hung heavy in her hand. She swayed uncertainly on the sidewalk and glared at Ron.

Ron shut his eyes. "God," he muttered, "it's me. Ron. Your punching bag. Do you think you could take a fifteen minute breather? Please?"

She advanced on Ron and Wade, who sat with their hands raised under the glowing eye of her pistol. She remained several paces from them. It was clear she had trouble standing at this point, but neither teen felt like testing the fury she spat at them. "You stay there. You just stay there! This circus is over. I'm radioing for backup, and I swear to God, if one of you even breathes funny—"

The sound of an engine grew steadily behind Dini, but Ron and Wade did not notice, as they were transfixed by the kill shot she kept leveled between them. Dini remained unaware until the screech of brakes turned her around. She stared drunkenly at the pair of headlights baring down on her, but had not the energy to jump away. "Oh, son of—"

A sickening crunch launched Dini off the flat front of the old VW van sliding to a halt against the curb. Her rag doll body flopped next to Ron and Wade, who watched her land at an unnatural angle with disinterested horror.

The driver's door of the van flew open and spit out a hysterical Monique. "Oh my God! Oh God!" she screamed, and rushed to fall at Dini's side. "I didn't—I was going too fast because I needed to find you—The brakes locked—I've never driven anything with locking—Oh God!—I didn't see her, and I couldn't—I had to find you, because I want to help—I **do** want to help, but—Oh God!"

Ron tiredly examined Dini. Labored breathing rattled from her bloody lips. That was the best he could say for her. "Don't feel too bad. It was an accident, and she was holding a gun on us anyway."

"Kind of a bitch," Wade agreed numbly.

Monique looked wildly at Ron. "Ron, you can fix her. Do what you did to me!"

"Yeah, yeah." Ron lifted his hand toward Dini. It took him two tries to rest his fingers on her face without smothering her. His vision blurred as he gathered his center and stretched into Dini. Wounds new and old stained her aura. He touched each of them ethereally, fading in and out of Wade's conversation with Monique.

"Where did you find the car?" Wade asked.

Monique calmed down as the red energies that had unsettled her so began knitting Dini back together. She had shucked her burnt bra and tied her torn shirt at her ribs in a way that made Wade's hormones distracting. Her eyes were puffy, but her tears were long gone. "I sat in the backroom for about five minutes before I realized what a putz I was being. Then I found a car, threw a brick through its window, and aimed myself at the nearest hotspot. I figured you guys would cause at least a little more trouble before you ditched town."

Shaking his eyes from her blouse, Wade said, "But why'd you come back? Ron and I didn't blame—"

"I blamed myself," Monique said stubbornly.

"Guys." Ron wobbled above Dini, pushing more and more magic into her to shore up her kinked spine.

"You guys came back for me. You came back. I should be able to do at least that." She drew a shuddering breath, clearly bracing herself. "I'm not much in a fight, but I want to help any way I can."

"Uh, guys?" Ron said quietly. The corners of his vision shrank around the almost-healed Dini.

Wade smiled at Monique. "The wheels are a good start. But come on," he said with a smirk, "an old kraut bus? Ron and I were going to steal a cherry convertible."

She rolled her eyes. "And get pulled over five miles down the road. The van's old, so it doesn't have any fancy anti-theft jazz, and it's harder to spot than some bright red, two hundred horsepower penis."

The last twinkling of scarlet faded from Ron's palm. He pulled it back, revealing a healthy, mercifully insensate Dini. "Guys?" he whispered.

"Hmm? Oh, sorry, Ron. What is it?" asked Wade.

"Catch me." Ron slumped forward onto Dini's chest. Monique and Wade pulled him off the agent and lifted him by the arms. His head lolled. He was unconscious. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes.

Grunting, the pair of stand-in sidekicks hoisted Ron and began dragging him toward the van. Monique grabbed the rear sliding door and pulled it open. "We should hurry. I didn't see any Globe guys on the way over, but I can't believe they wouldn't want to check out all the noise you guys made."

"Good plan."

As they slid Ron onto the van's bench, Wade glanced back at the tenants gathered on the lawn. They had turned collectively pale, and stared in open awe as Wade and Monique lifted Ron horizontal and laid him to rest. A particularly large woman had fallen to her knees. Her hand rested over her gaping mouth. Several more tenants gathered around Dini, who moments ago appeared as though she would never walk again, and now slumbered, peacefully whole.

It took a moment to connect the dots in his head. "Uh, it's okay," he told the crowd, and rubbed the back of his neck. "That was monkey magic, not messiah magic."

The uncomfortable silence spurred Wade and Monique into the vehicle, where they wasted no time in putting distance between themselves and the bizarre scene.

* * *

Yori sat in a field of threshed wheat with Hana on her lap. A broad hole in the earth sat next to her, marked with metal rods driven into the ground and a yellow tarp she'd punched through to crawl out. Dirt clung to her and to Hana in tiny clumps. 

The horizon blazed with dawn. Colors trickled down from the sky and turned the farmland into a rolling palette. The crickets' chirp gave way to the morning song of birds and distant cattle. And the barn masking the Locker's entrance remained contemptuously silent and still not a hundred yards from where they sat.

Her gaze remained on the barn long after Hana's catatonia had become open tears, and then quiet sniffling. She waited for what seemed an eternity with endless patience and wounded honor for some sign of change in the barn. Her muscles, already throbbing, begged her with cramps and pain to move. But Yori stayed vigilant.

Presently, Hana had joined Yori in her vigil, sniffing only on occasion. She remained surprisingly still for a girl that had demonstrated such boundless energy and initiative before. But even her impressive pre-k patience had its limits. "Kim's not coming back, is she?" Hana asked Yori in a heartbreaking voice.

Yori's eyes did not stir. "I do not know, child," she told Hana. "We must have faith."

Even as she spoke, Yori sensed the air pulse. She removed Hana from her lap and stood. Waves of pressure pushed her from the direction of the barn, too slight for any but those trained to sense them to notice. The faith she spoke of rose in her chest.

The roof of the barn erupted, blowing old shingles into the sky in a single belch of noise and fire. An old tractor flew from the barn's open door in flaming pieces. The ground shook, and the air screamed with heat. Yori instinctively covered Hana, who screamed at the sight of the hellish barn. Flecks of debris rained down around them as they watched the mock barn glow red and orange.

Hana leapt toward the barn, only to be stopped by Yori's quick arm. Hana screamed. She sobbed and struggled, trying to break free from Yori's grasp. "Kim!" Hana screamed. "Kim, no! No!"

Yori hugged the child, feeling none of the elbows and heels Hana drove into her trying to escape. She hugged Hana to quell her own sob, knowing full well the likelihood of surviving a blast of that magnitude contained in such an enclosed structure as the Locker. "Peace, child," she pleaded. "There is nothing more we can do."

Tugging at the arm around her waist, Hana squirmed and struggled. Then her struggles ceased as her tearful eyes fell back upon the barn. "Kim!" she shouted.

The change in her tone made Yori open her eyes. There, framed in the barn's door, a single figure emerged from the flames. Her feminine form grew apparent as she drew closer, moving with a steady limp. Kim clutched her stomach as if wounded. The billowing heat caught her red hair and set it fluttering like a banner, flying it proudly on her triumphant march from the Locker.

Yori scooped Hana up bodily and ran, calling upon reserves of motion she thought she'd long since tapped. She ran until her sides threatened to burst, and reached Kim in a matter of seconds. "Kim-san!" she cried.

Hana burst from Yori's arms and clamped around Kim's leg, bawling uncontrollably. She mashed her cheek into Kim's pants and poured salty tears into the dozens of tiny scratches that had torn through the canvas material. "I'm sorry," she sobbed over and over. "I'm sorry, Kim."

Kim patted Hana's gnarled crown of hair with her torn glove. She smiled tiredly at the hysterical girl, trying to calm her without words. She had no strength left with which to reassure her otherwise.

Yori pulled at Kim's other hand, which remained clutched at her stomach. "Kim-san, are you hurt?" Yori asked. When she pulled the hand away, she revealed several shallow cuts marring Kim's purple shirt and pale skin. Confused, Yori glanced down into Kim's palm. There, a tiny patch of pink wiggled, burbling on occasion. It's whiskers twitched.

"Had to go back for my mole rat," Kim said hoarsely. She glanced back at the burning barn as if reading Yori's next thought, and said, "Don't worry, I didn't blow the place up. Just the front hatch. Lockdown's a bitch to get through when you don't have your Kimmunicator."

Kim took Hana by the hand, giving the sniffling girl another pat. Then she lurched forward and fell into Yori's arms, unable to continue on her own. Yori staggered under Kim's weight. "Kim-san, we must—"

"Get me to the jet," Kim croaked commandingly. "We've got work to do." Then she glanced down at Hana before leveling a cold glare at Yori. "And you and I need to talk."

**To Be Continued**

* * *

Two months. Wow. I'd like to apologize for the horrendous delay. The gap basically boils down to August being such a terrible month for me that it took almost all of September to recover. But I'm (hopefully) back on track with a double-sized chapter that, as I look at its word count, clocks in at about one sixth of a novel. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm glad you all made it this far. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with encouragement or threats of bodily harm to keep me going. 

By the by, sharper eyes will discover the nod I gave to Mr. Wizard's "Way Too Old School." Check it out when you're done reviewing this. Then go check out MattK's "Bleeding Through" stories, because they are freaking amazing.

Big thanks to Isamu for telling me what worked and what didn't here. See you all for our next exciting chapter, where the best is yet to come.


	6. Heroes

"_Do you understand your mission, Lady Shego_?"

Shego glared at the hover car's dashboard monitor. She wasn't concerned with taking her eyes off the road, considering that the only thing below them was blue ocean and twilight sky. "Oh, I understand it. I just think it's a complete waste of time."

Dementor tilted his helmet toward the camera on his end of the communication link. His eyes narrowed. "_Believe it or not, I share your lack of enthusiasm at this particular reunion. But the fact of the matter is, I am in need of a certain…expertise._" He choked on the last word.

"You can't be serious."

"_If only I weren't. Nevertheless, you have your orders. You and the boy are to proceed directly to—_"

"Yeah, yeah, I heard it all the first time. Sheesh," Shego said, rolling her eyes.

As she reached to shut the monitor off, Dementor cut in, "_And Shego? Wear the wigs. Both of you._"

She banished him from the hover car with a flip of the switch, saving a choice curse for when his image disappeared from the monitor. She hated the wig. It had its advantages, but whenever she wore it, she always felt…nasty.

She glanced over to the silent side of the car's cockpit. There, the young, redheaded teen had slumped in slumber against his seat. A shoulder bag sat in his lap, bulging with his prize from the Middleton Locker raid.

Shego had to admit, it was an impressive piece of burglary. She wasn't partial to such forward smash-and-grab tactics, preferring those for when the situation went sour. Which usually happened when Kim Possible showed up. But thanks to the wigs, that was no longer a possibility.

Her boredom became acute, and so she reached over and flicked the teen's ear. "Yo, Red!" she shouted.

He was up at once, curling himself around the bag to protect it, eyes wild and darting around. "Buh? Wha? Who?" When he saw Shego's smirk, he relaxed, and scowled. "Ha. Hilarious," he muttered.

"Well, what can I say? I've been awake for the past thirty hours in this flying donut waiting to pick your ass up. I need at least a hot meal and a shower if you want me to be pleasant," she said.

"You might want to try the shower anyway," he muttered.

"There you go, work the bitchiness out. Talk to me. I'm bored," she said, turning her attention back to the car's instruments. "Your dad just phoned in for us to pick something up on our way back. Gotta keep sharp if we've got a tussle coming up."

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he said, "Father called? We have a mission?"

"More like a pit stop. Or garbage pickup," she amended, making a face. "Still, might be fun. I can fill you in now, if you want. That is, unless you need another nappy-poo, Red."

He scowled. "My name isn't Red," he told her flatly. "I want you to stop calling me that."

"Yeah? And I want a job that doesn't stick me with babysitting some freckle-faced tube baby with a whining complex and an overdose of ugly. So we're even."

Arms folded, he set his jaw and stared out the front of the hover car, fully annoyed. "Well, I think you're ugly, too," he said childishly.

Shego smirked, keeping her eyes forward just as he did. "No, you don't. And it's kind of cute. But keep your ugly head in the game, Red. Garbage pickup or not, you always gotta be ready."

"Ready for what?" he grumped.

"Off the top of my head? Anything."

* * *

Kim hated the sound of athletic tape being unraveled from its roll. As a cheerleader, she'd experienced her fair share of sprains. When her career as an extreme Samaritan had gone global, it had introduced her to a slew of new injuries, and most of them had, in one way or another, required that bland white tape. It held gauze in place. It kept makeshift splints on through jungle treks and mountain descents. It kept her wrists and ankles just shy of unmanageable pain when her courage couldn't afford for her body to quit. 

At the moment, a large roll of athletic tape orbited Kim's arms to mummify the medicated burn patches she'd layered over them. Each patch was coated with topical jelly designed to prevent infection and ease pain. The wonderful, nigh-narcotic absence of pain made Kim tolerant of the fact that the jelly also felt like a giraffe with a head cold had sneezed on her. Satisfied, she tore the tape and patted its tail down gently on her arm.

"Kimmunicator," she said, her voice still hoarse from smoke, "what's the status on that analysis?" The watch beeped from atop the cockpit control panel and projected a percentage above its tilted face. The hovering number hadn't reached one hundred yet, but it was close. Behind the glowing number, clouds rushed past the cockpit canopy, leading them nowhere fast.

Her eyelids drooped, but she didn't worry. The autopilot kept them in a holding pattern without her. Besides which, she knew she couldn't fall asleep. Her knotted stomach reminded her constantly of that.

Yori swiveled in the copilot seat and examined Kim with frank concern. She opened her mouth to speak, but reconsidered at Kim's sidelong look. Instead, she glanced at the Kimmunicator, and asked, "What will you do when the analysis is complete?"

Kim's eyes closed entirely. "That depends. The hair I found matched some cursory triggers in the Team Possible database. It could have been a chemical compound, an energy signature…any one of the thousand weird little details crammed into my life. Doing a full workup will give us a better chance of picking the right freak to point our freak-fight at."

"Very well," said Yori. She watched Kim sink into the pilot's seat. The bandages layered over Kim's burns blended with her too-pale pallor, worrying Yori further still. "You may rest if you wish, Kim-san. I will wake you when the device's task reaches completion."

The knot in Kim's stomach tightened. She cracked one eye, resting its meaningful gaze upon Yori. "Oh, but if I did that, I would miss our little talk about Hana," she said cheerily.

"Oh. Yes. Yes, of course." Yori rubbed her arm and glanced around the cabin. "Is the child…?"

"Haven't seen her since we boarded." With great effort and greater reluctance, Kim straightened in her seat and opened her eyes. Her muscles made loud protest of her stern posture, but Kim wasn't about to let the squirming ninja off the hook. "She's probably freaked out from the last twenty-four hours. Especially the part where it turns out she has monkey magic. Imagine that."

Yori chose her words carefully. In a measured voice, she said, "It is an astonishing development. But why do you assume that I know anything of the child's manifestation of power?"

Kim's scoff felled Yori's poker face. "Because I have this amazing knack I picked up from years of not being an idiot. You show up, and when GJ buries the needle on the 'crazy' meter, who do you grab? Not your 'Chosen One,' but his kid sister, who's turned a surprisingly well-spoken ninja into a tongue-tied mess who can't even use her name."

Frustration crinkled Yori's perfect brow. "Curious. I never believed I would encounter a situation in which I would feel nostalgia for Ron-san's obliviousness," she said.

Despite herself, Kim smirked briefly. "It grows on you that way. Now spill. Why is Hana suddenly a candidate for the next Miss Magical Girl USA?"

Yori collected herself physically and mentally, folding her legs beneath her and clearing the butterflies from her chest with a deep sigh. "I fear there is nothing sudden in the child's development, Kim-san. She is an arcane construct of Yamanouchi's design."

Kim stared at the crestfallen confessor, forgetting her annoyance. "I'm sorry. Did you say 'construct?' As in, 'constructed?' Your ninja school **made** a person?"

"Not a person. A vessel." Yori spoke matter-of-factly, ignoring Kim's disbelieving expression. "You recall Ron-san's initial contact with magic, when he was exposed to the four jade idols."

"Vividly," Kim grunted, remembering a mission long ago that was rapidly becoming her least favorite memory.

Nodding, Yori continued, "Then you will also recall that Ron-san destroyed the idols."

"So Monkey Fist could never use their magic again. For all the good it did us."

Yori shook her head at this. "It was a grave error, I fear. Magic is, by its simplest definition, a form of energy. And like all energy, it cannot be destroyed—"

"—only converted." Kim slapped her forehead. "But there's no way Ron could have known—"

"The 'why' is immaterial," Yori told her. "Ron-san released an immense quantity of magic. Left alone, such an amount of free-floating power can destabilize the delicate balance of nature itself."

"What kind of amount are we talking here?"

"You have seen how much power Ron-san possesses after simply coming into contact with the idols?" Yori asked.

"Yeah," said Kim. Then she blanched. "Oh."

"Precisely the reason our sages labored to construct a new vessel for the loosed magic of the broken idols. They collected a majority of the magic, and gave it physical form as an infant girl."

Kim pinched her eyes shut and massaged the bridge of her nose. "Okay," she said, hunching forward, "I can see how destabilizing nature with the hocus pocus equivalent of nuclear winter would be bad. Kudos for stopping that. But see, here's where you lose me. A bunch of mountain monks suck up all this destructive power, and they need somewhere to put it. So they **make** a **person**?"

Her shout didn't faze Yori. "The child is not a 'person' in the normal sense of the word. She has no parents, had no birth, and is only flesh and blood because the magic used to fabricate her tricked the collected power into 'believing' it is flesh and blood."

Kim's eyes clenched tighter as she gritted her teeth. "Okay. Okay. It's a serious testament to how screwed up my life is that this whole stupid situation sounds plausible."

Yori stiffened. "You will not call my beliefs stupid, Possible-san," she said archly. "I am sorry if my Order's struggle to maintain the tenuous balance in forces to which your so-called modern world blinds itself is such an inconvenience. We will attempt to avert the next apocalyptic crisis in a manner more in keeping with your paltry worldview."

Hands raised, Kim said, "Easy, all right? Sarcasm received." She passed a long, cleansing breath through her whole body, exhaling as much disbelief as she could afford to lose. "Okay. Containing power: thumbs up. Question: why a little girl? Is there some kind of cap on the number of magical swords you can have?"

"Weapons may find new masters. Objects are subject to theft and purchase. But a person is another matter entirely," Yori said. She regarded Kim skeptically, and continued, "Take your own reaction. Would you expect a repository of ancient arcane potential to be a mere child?"

"But why Hana?" Kim pressed. "I mean, why would you send her halfway around the world if she's so important? I know Ron's sort of your default go-to guy, but I've seen what you're packing on top of that mountain, and she'd probably be safer up there, out of reach of…everybody."

"You must understand," Yori explained, "This is not a weapon we are hiding. The child is a physical manifestation of earthly divinity. She is a conduit to the otherworldly forces that have shaped our way of life."

Kim's eyes bugged. "Hana Stoppable is your GOD?"

Yori tilted her head. "The child is more like an angel. She is a link to the divine. And as such, she requires the utmost protection until her mind and spirit mature past her need for this physical form. Were we to send Ron-san an object to protect, I am confident that he would do so to the best of his abilities. Sadly, there may come a time when even the Chosen One's best will not be enough. To ensure the magic's security, we created something that Ron-san would die for."

"A sister. You created a sister to make sure Ron would do whatever it took," murmured Kim, understanding at last.

"You know well of their relationship. Surely you see the wisdom in such an act."

It made perfect, twisted sense to Kim. Yamanouchi had created from pure magic a child, a perfect child, and sent it to a loving family and a supernaturally gifted guardian all at the same time. Hana's genius intellect and stunning development, too, became crystal clear. The perfect daughter would become everything her parents wanted, everything they subconsciously found lacking in their own offspring—intelligent, independent, strong, and graceful.

Kim fell back into her seat and clutched her spinning head. "Holy…" she muttered.

"Precisely," Yori said with a nod.

"But Hana—"

"—is not a real person," stressed Yori. "When the time comes, she will realize her potential and shed her mortal coil to accept her true form. Only then will she join with her avatar, the Monkey Master, and lead the disciples of Yamanouchi in ushering a new era."

A tinny sob fell up from the floor. Yori and Kim looked down to a small vent set at the base of the control panel. Frightened brown eyes flashed from behind the grating of the vent before disappearing. The pattering of hands and knees moved under the deck, away from the women and their weighty words. Choked crying warbled up through the vent briefly before fading away.

Yori jerked her dawning horror between the tiny vent and Kim's unconscionable smugness. "I didn't…she cannot yet…" stammered Yori.

"I guess your sages neglected to mention that your 'conduit to the divine' likes hiding in small places when she gets scared or upset," Kim said.

She searched her memory, and recalled from her brief tenure with Global Justice that the vent below them connected to a small utility space beneath the cockpit accessible from the lower deck. She rose to access just that when her Kimmunicator chirped at her. Its blank face blinked green twice.

Eagerly, Kim plucked and donned the device. Its analysis of the follicle sprang to hologram immediately, offering Kim an image of the helix culled form the hair. Kim skimmed the informational text around the helix. Her expression brightened. "Seventy-two percent genetic match found on file!" she exclaimed. "Outstanding!"

Yori, glad to forget the previous conversation, leaned forward in anticipation. "You have matched the hair to one of your enemies?"

Kim's face collapsed as she read on. The rest of her followed suit, folding heavily into the pilot seat. "No," she whispered.

"Then who—"

"Seventy-two percent genetic match," she read aloud, "for Kimberly Anne Possible." Silence roared as she stared at the helix…her helix. Her genetics.

Someone had cloned her. They had cloned copies of her and Ron, who were out there, committing crimes. Who could move and fight like they did. Who were convincing enough to fool Global Justice.

Yori frowned. "How is this possible?" Instead of answering, Kim took hold of the hover jet's controls and tilted the craft onto a new course. "Kim-san? Where are we going?"

The aching fatigue in Kim's body trickled away. Her bruises, her burns, her hairline fractures all pooled together into white hot rage. In a low, clenched voice, she said, "I need to see a doctor."

* * *

Ron awoke incrementally, regretting each step he took away from the inky blackness swamping his mind. Every sense he reclaimed introduced him to the unpleasant reality around him. A lumpy mattress jabbed his back with springs. Stale, coppery air stank in his nostrils. A static-filled television buzzed somewhere nearby. When he worked up the courage, Ron peeled back his eyelids and stared up at a beige ceiling splattered in crusty clumps of green. 

"You're awake." Wade's voice sat Ron up on the bed, which resided in a motel room seedy enough to make Ron want a hot shower just for being there. A TV sat atop a chipped dresser across the room, blaring with fuzzy noise. Wade sat in a chair next to the dresser. A brand new laptop sat on his legs and chattered beneath his fingertips. Wade split his attention between the laptop and Ron as he said, "You've got some great timing."

"Thanks, I'm fine," Ron quipped. He rubbed the migraine seated heavily atop his neck. Then he took in the rest of the room, and was underwhelmed. "Where are we? This looks like a room that a cheap motel would puke out after a night of hard drinking."

"We're in Go City, and these accommodations you're so quick to criticize are the kind that doesn't ask questions when a college girl shows up with her 'little brother' and her passed-out 'cousin' in the middle of the night to rent a room with cash." Wade glared critically over the top of his laptop for a second before returning to its screen.

Go City. Evidently, Wade and Monique had managed to escape Global Justice after he'd passed out. He didn't bother asking what time it was, or how long he had been unconscious. It was dark outside the window, and he knew Go City was nowhere near Middleton. They must have driven an entire day with him out in the back seat.

"You had enough cash on you for a motel?" Ron asked. He hadn't even had a chance to grab his wallet before being arrested, and its meager contents wouldn't have gotten him a candy bar in the motel lobby, much less a room.

Wade glanced up again. "To prevent you from testifying against me at a later date, I'm gonna go ahead and answer that with, 'yes,' and change the subject."

Ron grimaced and gave Wade the okay sign. The less he knew, the better. "Gotcha. Hey, where'd you get the spiffy computer?" At a third hard look from Wade, he grimaced again, and said, "Right. Sorry. Boy, you two were busy while I was conked out."

He looked around, suddenly aware of Monique's absence. "Wait. Where's Monique? Or did you trade her for a wireless card on your path to criminal mastermind…hood? Maybe she's out motivating 'the girls' while you impersonate Nigerian royalty online."

The closed bathroom door answered with Monique's muffled voice. "I'm in here. And I'm primping, not pimping, so you'd better cool your mouth before it gets slapped. I don't want to hear lip from the limp sack of heavy I dragged from the parking lot to our _only_ bed."

"Limp?" he said, half-offended. Then he frowned. "Primping? For what? What the hell is going on?"

"Fact-finding," Wade said. "We can't spend all our time blowing up hover jets and getting shot by cute, angry agents."

"It does help pass the time," quipped Ron.

"We need to know more about this frame job. Who's pulling the wool over GJ's eyes, and why. Everything's happening too quickly. We need information if we're going to track down Shego and that wonder twin of yours."

Ron started to protest, but stopped. He wanted to tell Wade that finding Kim and his sister was the only thing that mattered. But he knew that they couldn't risk calling Kim via the Kimmunicators, or Global Justice would just track them again. And he knew Wade could think of no other way to contact Kim, or he would have done it already.

The one thing he did know was that Kim was still on the case. He didn't doubt for one second that she was out there now, tracking down the bad guys, and that the surest way to find her was to do the same and hope that their paths crossed along the way. That meant hunting down Shego and his unlicensed knockoff.

That other Ron…

In a subdued voice, Ron answered, "Sure. So why are we in Go City? And again, what up with the primping?"

Wade's eyes and fingers were enthralled by his return to the internet, but his mouth answered, "There's a man here who's fairly well connected to the criminal community. Really well connected. Basically a criminal version of me. If anyone pulls a heist worth talking about in the lower forty-eight, he's in the know. Unfortunately, he's busy tonight, and we need to talk to him fast."

"Some sort of big gala event downtown at a hotel. Movers and shakers, mingling, that kind of thing," Monique called through the door.

"So you need to sneak into the event, find the guy, and talk him into giving us some intel on whoever's behind the Cannon heist, all without tipping off who you are or why you want to know."

Ron's mind boggled. "What?"

A pained expression twisted Wade's face. "Ron, please. Focus. This is really important."

"I know! That's why I'm having a hard time buying into the idea that you want me to do this. Do you recall my track record for talking with villains? Whenever I do, they usually start arching us! Monkey Fist. Señor Senior Senior? Hello?"

"Ron…"

He threw up his hands. "Seriously, there has to be a better plan than this. Something I can beat up. I can do that. But I don't even know what a 'gala' is. Do you eat it? How big is it? What do you wear?"

The bathroom door opened. Monique walked out, smirking through a subtle layer of makeup that brought out her cheekbones. She carried in each hand a hanger, one of which held a heavy garment bag, the other of which had a gauzy, glitzy red dress that fluttered as she hung it atop the door. Monique wore a formal coat that hung from calf to shoulder and exposed her elegant neckline. Her hair swirled atop her head in a complicated coif.

"In that order: no; big; and this," she said.

She tossed Ron the heavy garment bag. It flopped across his lap, pinning him there. Ron unzipped the bag and examined the pressed tuxedo inside, no doubt another of the pair's "acquisitions" while he had been unconscious. "Okay. Joke's over," he said.

Monique shook her head. "No joke, cutie. If we're going to blend long enough to contact our, um, contact, you need to look presentable."

His disbelieving stare left the tuxedo for her smug and stunningly beautiful face. "And your part in this insanity is?"

Hands cocked on hips, Monique struck him with a haughty smile. "I'm there to help make you look legitimate."

Ron's head spun as he hefted the tuxedo. "Right. So…let's start back from the top. I'm supposed to what with who about where the what is, now?"

"No time, key lime," she said. Ron gave Monique a quizzical look as she ushered him toward the bathroom. She clarified, "That's your flavor of cutie pie. Never mind. Just go shower and shave off the fuzz. You smell like you look, and right now, that's not even in the neighborhood of a compliment."

"Yeah, but…"

The bathroom door slammed, crushing Ron's question. Monique held the doorknob until she heard running water inside. Then she sighed and slumped onto the bed, taking care not to mess her hair. "Wade, this is gonna be a train wreck," she said in a voice she made sure wouldn't carry into the running shower.

Wade nodded from behind his laptop. "In Technicolor," he agreed. "But we're a little low on options. If this doesn't pan out, I don't know what else to do. We need to know something about what's going on, and we need to find out before Global Justice catches up to us again. They will. And when they do…"

They both left the thought to trail off unfinished. Ron's voice rose in the background with a warbling rendition of _It's You _to fill the silence.

* * *

Soft sobs guided Kim through the lower deck of the hover jet. Her footfalls echoed through the claustrophobic cargo bay as she approached the hatch of the troop compartment. It had been left open in haste. One of the overhead lockers inside hung open as well. As she approached, Kim heard the open locker murmuring to itself between sniffles. 

"Matter and energy…immutably fixed…s-spontaneous energy transmutation…"

"Hana?" Kim called softly, pausing at the open hatch.

The murmuring stopped. The sniffling did not.

Kim smiled to herself and walked to the bench. She sat to one side of the sniffling locker. Sighing loudly, she leaned her head on the adjacent locker, and said, "I sure wish Hana were here. I really need to talk to her. Maybe we could discuss the laws of conservation of energy as pertaining to theology."

"Cut it out," the locker snapped in Hana's voice. "I know you know I'm here."

Kim kept her gaze and voice aimed at the empty bench across from her. "Can't put anything past you. You're too smart for me."

"I'M NOT A FREAK!"

Hana's scream rang through the metal locker. Kim winced, but she did not move. "I know you're not," she said.

Floodgates opened behind Hana's lips. "I'm just smart. Plenty of kids are really smart, it just happens. You're athletic, and nobody calls you fake. Ron cooks really well, and he's not accused of being a robot, or anything stupid like that! I'm smart. So what? It doesn't mean I'm not a person. There could be a lot of explanations for why that monkey magic came out of me. I live with an accident-prone Monkey Master, for crying out loud!"

"Yori isn't—"

"I HATE HER! I hate, hate, hate, hate her!" cried Hana. "What kind of messed-up person tells someone she isn't real? She's awful, and I HATE her. I never want to see her again. She's a liar!"

Kim drew her knees up to her chest, resting her heels on the edge of the bench. She'd had her own problems with Yori in the past, but had imagined herself to have worked through them, mostly. Now she tried to place herself inside Hana's miniscule shoes. "I can't say I blame you," Kim admitted.

"You know she's lying, right? You don't believe all that awful stuff she said. Right?"

Kim bowed her head. Yori's revelation made too much sense. Children like Hana, even real prodigies, weren't as self-aware as she was, and certainly couldn't project energy blasts. The story fit too well into Kim's unusual, mad-cap world to be entirely wrong.

"Of course she's lying," Kim said.

She stood and turned, looking into the open locker. Hana was curled up in the back, her pajamas rumpled and muddy, her face smudged with tears. At Kim's appearance, Hana bit her lip and shied further into the locker. But Kim didn't reach for the girl. She just stood there, leaning against the row of lockers and speaking in soothing tones.

"You're a little girl, Hana. You always have been, from the moment your mom and dad brought you home. Magic's got nothing to do with it. And if anything's wrong with you, I promise, we'll figure it out. Believe me, I know how scary it is when this monkey business starts messing with you." She tried to smile. The attempt lasted as long as it took her to meet Hana's terrified stare. Sighing, Kim said, "I'm sorry, Hana. You shouldn't have to go through anything like this. You don't deserve it."

Hana's hands and knees scrambled against metal as she launched herself out of the locker and into Kim's arms. She hugged Kim's neck tight and sobbed into her shirt.

"I'm sorry," she wailed. "I'm sorry! I don't hate you. I know I said I did, but I don't." Kim shushed her and stroked her hair, but the words kept pouring out of her. "I know you love Ron, and I never should've said you didn't. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Kim murmured into Hana's hair. "It's okay. I love you, Hana. It's okay."

She sat down with Hana in her lap, letting the little girl cry herself empty without another word. At last, when Hana had nothing left, she succumbed to Kim's gentle rocking, and drifted into a fitful sleep against the soggy spot she'd sobbed into Kim's shirt.

Kim exhaled a breath she'd been holding since first seeing Hana's eyes in the vent. She continued to rock the girl until she was certain Hana would no wake. Then, cradling Hana in one arm, she set about searching the other lockers for odds and ends, and constructed a bed made of emergency blankets and folded uniforms.

Kim tucked Hana into the bed on the deck and watched her sleep. She should have felt relieved, but she did not. The question of Hana's origin and destiny was, at best, delayed.

She watched Hana sleep. The knot in her stomach ached harder.

* * *

Ron felt a shiver climb up his spine, like someone had just stepped in his grave. He blamed his clothes. 

"Thanks," he said to Monique.

Monique grimaced and tugged the stubborn bow tie on Ron's collar. With a grunt, she finished with the black tie and patted his chest. "It's true what they say. Anybody looks good in a tux. The lip fuzz, on the other hand…"

Ron watched her straighten her long evening coat. He wiggled the tuft of blond hair affixed to his upper lip. A light chill nipped at them, even in the depths of Go City. Ron's suit coat kept him comfortable. Monique's coat sparked his curiosity. He recalled the red dress she'd hung on the door, and said, "You should have worn the other one. You look slammin' in red."

"Nope," she said, and gave him a cheshire smile.

Spinning slowly, Ron took in the strip of the city upon which they loitered. A grand hotel rose up before them, whose very steps dwarfed their rat hole motel. Posh individuals of all ages mingled on the steps in finery that made Ron and Monique, clad as they were, seem as paupers by comparison. Valets and security in hotel uniforms kept the scene orderly and moving with a level of organization that made the slob in Ron cringe.

Ron scratched his fake mustache and traveled the height of the hotel with a glance. His eyes had to stop and rest halfway up before continuing on to the distant peak of the building. "This is going to be a huge disaster," he said.

Monique took him by the elbow and led him up the steps, patting his arm as if he were a child. "No, honey. This is going to work. We get in, see the whoever, and get out. No complications."

"Seriously. Visible from space. NASA is going to detect this one," he said.

Their youth and poise outshone the off-the-rack lackluster nature of their clothes. Eyes from all around began following their ascent. They were, judging by a glance, the youngest people in the crowd by at least five years.

"We stick out. We stick out, and people are going to notice," Ron said through a pasted smile. "Quick, let's turn around and pretend like we left our tickets in our other private jet."

Monique tightened her arm around his. She broadened her smile accordingly at a pair of curious elites, one of whom wore an honest-to-God monocle. "Ron? We don't actually have tickets to this. Wade couldn't get a pair. You have to talk our way through the door."

Ron stiffened for half a second. Then, at Monique's gentle urging, he continued up the stairs, affecting a pompous, almost regal gait. "And you didn't tell me this why?" he hissed out of the corner of his mouth. His voice was a hushed scream that entirely mismatched his smile.

"So you wouldn't freak out," she whispered back.

"Great work," he squeaked. Sweat beaded at his hairline. "So how long do I have to come up with something?"

A light crowd waited around the double door entrance. Velvet ropes marshaled the crowd into order, and order overseen by the burly security guard and his clipboard. Journalists waited behind more velvet rope with cameras and microphones. Monique made the mistake of meeting the guard's eye. She smiled harder.

"As long as it takes us to reach the door?" she whispered.

As they approached the velvet rope, arm in arm, smiling as a lovely couple enjoying the evening, Ron hissed, "I swear I will get you. You and Wade. Revenge."

The mountainous man shoved into a red blazer stopped them at the rope. "Name?" he rumbled, and lifted his clipboard.

Light, airy laughter from Ron made Monique's frightened smile widen. He patted her locking grip on his elbow and said, "Isn't this quaint, darling? Someone who doesn't recognize us." Boredom hooded Ron's eyes as he waved at the clipboard. "Smith, party of two," he said.

Pages fluttered on the clipboard. "Not on the list," the guard said.

Ron offered the muscular mountain another laugh that didn't quite match his first. "Ah. Well. My assistant must have made the arrangements under my nom de plume," he said, pronouncing it _nome-day-plumy_. I must remember to fire her, and then ruin her. Financially. That's what I do. We're under Jones, my kind goon. Party of two."

The security guard kept his gaze locked on Ron, never glancing down at the clipboard, which creaked in his gargantuan grasp. "Not on the list," he said.

Monique's smile spread past her cheeks and to her ears as Ron slapped his forehead theatrically. "Oh, of course! It's under my maiden name. Vanvolkerdumpel—" and he coughed into his fist before finishing, "—stein. 'Doctor' Vanvolkerdumpel—" he coughed again, "—stein. Party of two."

The guard rifled the pages of his clipboard without checking it once. His eyes drilled holes into Ron's grin. "Not. On. The list."

Two urges fought to break Monique's frozen terror: the urge to run, and the urge to apply some percussive sense to the back of Ron's head. She had no time to decide. A second man dressed in a red security blazer, who looked as much an aficionado of steroids as the first, approached the door from the inside. He glanced over Ron and Monique before whispering something in the first's ear.

Clipboard Mountain straightened and cleared his throat. His meaty paw drew the velvet rope aside. "My apologies. Please go in, uh, sir. And ma'am. Please enjoy yourselves."

Cameras flashed at the pair as they transformed from gatecrashers to guests. Ron reeled in the flashes and felt himself pulled through the door by the vise clamped on his elbow. "Did I get us in?" he asked in a daze.

The double doors led them into an exquisite lobby staffed with more red blazers of a less muscular variety. The posh partygoers of the stairs mingled here in droves, migrating slowly down a hallway to the right. An arrowed sign above the hallway guided them to the gala event of the season.

Artwork lined the walls in two and three dimensions, flanking the swanky migration of partygoers with tasteful portraits, embedded statuary, and tabled vases. Monique forgot her apprehension for a moment in the bedazzling finery. Despite the disaster at the door, things might actually work out for the best.

Once more possessed of his wits, Ron muttered sidelong, "So now that I've diplomacized our way past the door, can you tell me what this whole thing is? Wade just got all stammery when I asked him what the gala was. Or even what 'a' gala was." His eyes narrowed, and he asked, "Wait, what aren't you guys telling me?"

Monique's apprehension came rushing back. "Okay, Ron. Stay calm," she murmured. "Remember, Wade and I believe in you. We know you can do this. And you know we wouldn't ask you to do something like this unless it was the only lead we had left, right?"

"I don't even know what 'this' is," he hissed. Feeling a numbness overcome his elbow, he added, "And why won't you let go of me."

"So you don't run," she said sweetly.

"Why would I run?"

The hallway opened into a balcony overlooking an immense ballroom crafted from marble and crystal. Circular tables encircled a dance floor, which hosted a handful of dancers kept lively by a band playing from a modular stage brought in for the occasion. A cityscape twinkled from behind enormous windows that stretched across one whole wall of the ballroom from floor to ceiling. Wait staff dressed in hotel reds wove through the throng of affluent minglers packed in the room.

But most prominent in the room was the giant banner stretched between two chandelier, fluttering gently in the air conditioning. Ron's lips mouthed the words as he read, "Go Team Go" on the glossy print. His stomach lurched.

He glanced down and spied three different colors among the black and white formalwear. They weren't hard to spot, as they had all been gathered at the VIP table sitting right next to the stage. A broad figure in blue, a svelte figure in purple, and twin figures in red all sat and laughed with a tuxedoed man whose sash identified him as the mayor of Go City.

Ron stared down at Team Go, the one super hero team on the planet with whom he was on a first-name basis. His stomach fell through the balcony and down to the dance floor, where it proceeded to freak out hysterically. The rest of him remained motionless and horrified.

"Oh. Okay then. That's a good reason to run," he said listlessly.

Monique just tightened her grip on his arm and grimaced.

* * *

The brilliant, daring, forward-thinking would-be ruler of Earth known to his terrified enemies as Doctor Drakken sat in a ten foot by ten foot cell and contemplated his best options for surviving through to lunchtime tomorrow. 

His fellow inmates often did not see eye to eye with his genius. They resented him for it. Despite his grand goals, and his unparalleled intellect, they were unwilling to overlook a simple laundry room mishap in which a rare moment of clumsiness on his behalf had, by pure chance, shoved three convicted murderers into an industrial washer and almost drowned them. Now he put that unparalleled intellect of his toward discovering a cure for the promise of an epic shank-storm of sharpened toothbrushes come the morning.

He practiced curling into a fetal ball on his bed, and was becoming quite good at whimpering for mercy, when a shadow crossed the shafts of light streaming through his barred window. Drakken uncurled and found a feminine silhouette lurking outside the window, suspended three stories up on the featureless prison wall by means he could not see. A pair of angry green eyes glared at him from inside the silhouette. Despite her obvious anger, he felt a surge of joy at her arrival.

"Shego!" he exclaimed. Then, as befitting a villain of his evil, he coughed and gruffed, "It's about time. Get me out of here!"

The eyes narrowed. The silhouette flashed red as a pencil-thin beam cut into the window bars. As the figure cut and caught the bars one at a time, Drakken came to the sinking realization that Shego had not come to save him.

She shimmied through the window, trailing a fiery mane that framed her disgusted expression. Her uniform had changed, and she looked as battered as Drakken had ever seen her, but she otherwise remained exactly the nightmare that he had cursed since his first day in prison. He snarled her name now. "Kim Poss—!"

Kim clapped her hand over his mouth and slammed him against the wall. Her elbow screamed with the effort as she lifted him bodily, pinning him above the floor. "If you get loud," she hissed, "I will make you very quiet, fast and very permanently. Do you understand?"

He nodded fearfully, and then slumped to the floor as she released him. Gasping, he collected himself, and noticed a second silhouette slink through the window. "Kim Possible? And a ninja?" he hissed. "What are you doing here?"

"We—"

"Haven't I suffered enough?" he moaned. "Isn't the indignity of being defeated and humiliated by my teenage nemesis enough? Must I suffer further indignity, defeat, and humiliation?"

"You—"

"No, it isn't enough for you," Drakken accused her, his voice and finger rising. "You won't be satisfied until you've stolen every last shred of my esteem and twisted it. Twisted it!" He mimed the motion, tearing apart his imaginary self-worth. "You, and your sass, and your sidekick, and your bald weasel, and your computer buddy—!"

The tip of a meticulously maintained katana rested on Drakken's throat. Yori had made no sound when she drew it, only a silvery flash in the dark. She kept it deathly steady as its prick ended Drakken's tirade. "If your silence will not be given freely, it will be purchased," she told him, "at a price you can ill afford."

Drakken fought hard to keep his prison orange jumpsuit dry. "Okay," he whispered. The blade flashed away without leaving a single mark. Gasping again, he rubbed his throat and whispered, "But why are you here?"

Kim collected herself in a breath. She grabbed Drakken by the lapels and slammed him back against the wall. "We're here because you cloned me, you son of a bitch!" she yelled.

Yori pulled Kim away from Drakken, who fell to the floor and curled into his practiced ball. "Kim-san, please," whispered Yori.

Kim's struggling lasted a few seconds. She calmed to the point where Yori would release her. The temptation to plant her boot into the quivering mass of Drakken remained, but she fought it. "You cloned me," Kim hissed at him. "You boosted my fighting style, stole my DNA, and made a quick-clone, or a syntho-drone, or something!"

"What are you…? Why would I clone you? I mean, again?" Drakken whimpered. "DNAmy has the double-helix fetish, not me. Why not go point swords at her?"

"Because if it was Amy, it would have been a Furry!" snapped Kim. She grabbed Drakken again, this time throwing him onto his mattress. Then she thrust her Kimmunicator between them and called up the footage from the Boise Locker robbery.

Drakken marveled first at the compact, elegant piece of technology on Kim's wrist, and then at its shimmering holographic display. The robbery played in black and white, compete with Kim's flipping hair and Ron's grim, commanding presence. By the time the footage ended, Drakken had forgotten his fear, and rubbed his jaw contemplatively. "That is pretty convincing," he admitted. "I recognize that punching and whatnot anywhere. I can see why you would have thought I did it."

Kim frowned as she waved the holo-screen away. "You're not telling me that you didn't do this."

"As much as I'd like to take credit for the snit you're in right now, I'm afraid I'm not responsible for this pair of spares you've got running amok." Surprisingly smug, Drakken lay back on his bunk and laced his fingers behind his head. "So sorry. Thanks for stopping by."

Yori's hand rested on the hilt above her shoulder. "Why should we believe the word of a villain such as you?" she demanded.

Drakken snorted. "Building a clone of the world's most irritating teenagers, and then downloading her fighting spirit into them? Pah-lease. There's only one way that can end: the extremely delicate process of copying the synaptic patterns into the clone would result in cognitive host resonance, resulting in all of those dopey little feel-good do-gooder impulses you have in that pumpkin head of yours winding up in the clone. It would be useless to me."

Kim's pumpkin head spun. "You're saying that the clone would act like me? Not just fight like me?"

"Duh," Drakken answered snidely. He rolled over, and said, "Now if you don't mind, I have a very busy day of being the recipient of some rather violent mommy issues from my neighbors to look forward to. You can show yourselves out."

Kim rolled Drakken roughly with her foot. "I'm not buying it," she said. "There are only a handful of people out there who can put a clone like that together. There are even fewer people who can copy brainwaves and plant them in somewhere else. But only one person I know has ever done both, and that's you. So you'd better tell me something, Drakken, or so help me—"

"What are you going to do?" he said. He rose from his bed, looking down at her with a detached sense of righteousness. "Are you going to throw me in prison? Take away everything I have? Is the great Kim Possible going to stoop to beating a broken man?"

Kim decked him.

Drakken sprawled against the bars of his cell and clutched his bleeding mouth. His vision swam with Kim, who loomed over him, glaring balefully and poising her knuckles. Blood dribbled from his lip as he said, "You…hit me?"

"No," Kim said, "I 'started' hitting you. And I'm not going to stop until you give me something I can use, or until I get bored with the crunching noises you make. Either way, I get what I want."

Her boot was halfway to his ribs when he squealed, "Wait! Wait!" Scrambling up, he pressed himself against the bars. "I h-have a lair. Most of my cloning equipment wound up there in storage. I haven't needed it in ages, it's probably just sitting there. Someone else might have f-found it. You could go, you could check! Then you'll see I had nothing to do with this."

Her glare pierced his flinch. "You swear that all your cloning equipment is at this lair?"

"Global Justice confiscated everything else I had! My weapons, my Empathy Chip, my Mind Reader Ray…I couldn't have done this!"

Kim grabbed him and threw him into the far wall. He bounced onto his bunk with a grunt. Then he curled around her foot as she planted it on his stomach, pressing him into the mattress.

"You're going to tell me exactly where the lair is and what I'm going to find there. Security, traps, equipment…everything. If I'm even remotely surprised by anything there, I'll come back for another visit," Kim told him.

Drakken proceeded to stammer in excruciating detail the location, layout, and protection of his lair. Whenever he would taper off, Kim let her heel drift meaningfully toward Drakken's groin, and he would miraculously recall a new detail. Half an hour of exposition passed until Kim felt satisfied and lifted her foot from Drakken's stomach.

She nodded to Yori. "We're done here. Let's pack it in before our luck runs out."

As Kim mounted the window to leave, Drakken snickered. He sat up and brushed the footprint off his stomach. "I was wrong," he said. "Shego did come for me. She just came with a different face," he quipped at Kim.

Kim froze, framed in the window. "What?" she said icily.

"This ruthlessness suits you, Kim Possible. My old teenage foe never would have broken in here to rough me up." His eyes grew sly as the dots began to connect in his head. "She would have waited for visiting hours. She would have cut a deal." His expression brightened. "You're desperate."

She pounced from the window and landed before him. "You want to go back to being quiet and simpering real fast," she told him darkly.

"Oh, and you're tough, too! This is priceless!" Drakken met her deadly glare with a grin. "See, this is precisely what I wanted to bring out in you. Desperation. Panic. Error. You've actually broken into a prison. Thinking about getting a cell of your own?"

Kim grabbed Drakken by the front of his suit and hauled their glares together. It didn't matter that her elbow felt ready to fall apart. She ignored the dull pain under her medicated bandages. "I'm warning you," she snapped.

"Go ahead," Drakken said, nonplussed. "You've already gotten what you came for. Now all you'll be doing is beating a poor, old, blue man senseless."

Kim had no retort. She realized with a sickening jolt that Drakken was absolutely right. But she refused to lose face. She twisted his lapels and growled, and gnashed her teeth as her mind raced to produce a reply.

Fate intervened, as it so often did for Kim, in the form of a tremendous explosion. The prison rocked beneath them, separating Kim and Drakken. Kim stumbled back into Yori's catch. Drakken fell to the floor. His laughter was lost in the wail of sirens outside. Spotlights flashed across the window.

"Karma's caught up with your new antics, Kimmie. Your luck's run out," he said.

* * *

"Ron, you have to breathe," Monique whispered. 

She stood next to Ron on the upper landing of the ballroom, which burst into applause at the end of the mayor's glowing tribute to Team Go. Team Go, standing on the stage, accepted the accolades with waving and false modesty. Wego appeared genuinely embarrassed by the attention, but Mego drank it in. The only person in the ballroom not thrilled was Ron. His false mustache hung crooked from his lip as he gaped in horror.

Monique pressed Ron's mustache back into place. "Ron, you can't freak out. You don't need to freak out. Everything will be okay." She leaned over, inserting herself into the scope of his empty gaze. "Ron?"

Ron came to at once and clapped loudly as the ballroom's applause died down. He earned a few odd looks before Monique silenced his hands with hers. "Sorry," he said. "I was just having this really vivid vision of the future."

Her intrigue piqued, Monique whispered, "Is that more of that magic thing? What did you see?"

"I saw Wade, with my hands wrapped around his little neck. He was trying to apologize for setting up a meeting with a crime guru under the nose of super heroes I'm on a first-name basis with. But he just couldn't get the breath for it. I think…yeah. Yeah, I'm going to kill Wade."

The rolling of Monique's eyes turned into a search of the tables around the dance floor below. She pulled Ron toward the staircase. "Come on. Let's go be inconspicuous down by where they're serving hors d'oeuvres."

"Kill Wade."

Monique led him to the edge of the dance floor, which was circled by small, prim tables large enough for four. They managed to claim an empty table before a snooty older couple could, thanks to Monique's launching of her elegant handbag into the vase of flowers on the table. The snooty couple left, and Monique held a seat for Ron.

Ron eyed the VIP table where Team Go sat. Hego was chatting up the politely bored mayor. "This will never work," said Ron. "Even with my awesome disguise, someone's gonna recognize me, and this is all going to become 'When Black Ties Attack.'" He glanced at Monique, who unbuttoned her evening coat calmly. "Too bad you didn't wear the red dress. At least I could've seen something pretty before I died."

Monique's coat slid from her shoulders, revealing a dazzling evening gown of metallic black that shimmered like starlight with every move she made. The dress's neckline and hem did their best to meet without giving away too much. The resultant effect left much of Monique's smooth, silky legs and generous curves on display.

She reached across the table and shut Ron's jaw. "The red one was nice," she said coyly. "But I thought this one would be better for making sure there isn't a damn eye in this place that can get to you without going through me first."

"Am I still here? I hadn't noticed," Ron said lamely. He burned a hole through Monique with his transfixed stare.

The band started playing a jazzy number. Monique pulled Ron from his seat and toward the dance floor. "C'mon. Your contact guy can find us out there as easily as here, and I figure you can't ogle my cleavage if it's pressed into you."

He followed willingly to the polished dance floor. "I'll take that bet."

Monique guided his hands to her hips and gave him a look that suggested he should keep them there. Then she draped her arms over his shoulders, and they stepped into the music. "Relax," she said. "At least pretend like you're having fun."

Ron's world-class imagination could not put a smile on his face. Neither could the world-class breasts hunkered against his chest. He watched the room over Monique's shoulder with growing dread. Every suit he saw, every glass that clinked, every joke he overheard and did not understand, served to remind him that he was entirely out of his element.

He heard Mego raucously laughing at his own joke from the VIP table. Panic jolted his spine. "That's it. I'm out," he hissed.

When he tried to bolt, Monique's arms remained locked around his neck, choking him back. She dragged him back into the music and held him close. "No, you're not," she whispered.

"I can't do this. I absolutely can't do this, Mon," he whispered into her ear. "Negotiating with bad guys falls squarely under Kim's half of the Team Possible duties. All I'm qualified to do is sit back, pick one of his flaws, and then bring it up over and over until he cries or flies into a murderous rage. Kim's the Kim, and I'm the Ron. I can't be the Kim."

"Kim's not here," Monique reminded him. "And I don't know if you noticed, but I don't exactly have a 'Kim' vibe going myself. I'm too stylish. That makes me the Ron, which means you're the Kim."

"I am so not the Kim!"

"Ron Stoppable, you better man up and start channeling your hundred-and-three pound cheerleader girlfriend!"

The pointed clearing of a throat ended their hushed argument. They turned to find a young, pert, beautiful blonde eyeing them from behind rectangular glasses. Her dress likely cost more money than Ron would ever see at one time, and it clung to a body that even raised Monique's eyebrows. "Pardon me," Blondie said politely, "but my employer would like a word with you."

Ron snorted, nearly unseating his fake mustache. "Well, super-dandy for your employer. But we were in the middle of something here, so—"

"Ron," Monique hissed, squeezing his forearm, "I'm pretty sure she's talking about our contact."

"—so it's about time!" Ron finished quasi-smoothly. Blondie didn't bat an eyelash. She gestured for them to follow, and then led them to a table in the back. Ron's gaze slid down Blondie's back and examined her hips in such detail that he didn't realize they had arrived until Monique elbowed him sharply.

He glanced up and caught the jowled smile of their contact. The man's tuxedo spilled over either side of his chair, a consequence of his lifestyle, which the teens extrapolated from the small banquet of desserts plated on the table. Blondie nodded to him, and announced, "Mister Stoppable, sir."

The tuxedoed white whale tilted his head, and Blondie took the seat next to his. Then he looked up. His jowls opened like curtains to reveal a smile. "Ah, Ron Stoppable," he said in a low, sly voice. His gaze brightened upon Monique. "And who is your lovely guest? Certainly this isn't Kim Possible, or I've been severely mislead. Pleasantly so, it seems."

"Monique," she said coldly, careful of his wandering eyes.

"Monique…?"

She tightened her smile and her grip on Ron's arm. "Just Monique," she said. "Like Cher, or Madonna, but without the skankiness."

"Of course. Please, be seated." He started and finished a piece of cheesecake while the teens took their seats across from him. At their wary glances, he chuckled, and said, "Please, no need for suspicion. If I had wished to harm you, I would have acted outside, rather than asking the doorman to allow you in. You're lucky that your friend, Mister Load, inquired so adamantly and clumsily in regards to this meeting. It allowed me to deduce the identity of the inquirer, which in turn piqued my intrigue. I hope you shan't disappoint."

"I don't care about your intrigue or your shant," Ron announced. "I'm here for information, and I hear you're the one to dole it out. Question number one: who are you?"

The man chuckled again. "In the interest of fair dealing, I suppose I can part with that information freely. I am a businessman of some esteem here in Go City, as well as in several other locales. I also happen to possess a multitude of, shall we say, 'interests' of which I am disinclined to share with more morally restrictive individuals such as yourself. In your colorful social circle, I'm known as Brotherson. 'Big Daddy' Brotherson. Perhaps you've heard of me?"

"Totally," Ron said, nodding emphatically. He scratched his head, and added, "Except, no, not so much. You're a businessman who morally restricts colorful circles?"

Big Daddy smirked. "I deal in information, Mister Stoppable, the very commodity of which you find yourself in need."

"Muh?"

Monique clenched her stomach, trying to squash the pandemonium of butterflies inside of it. "He's a crook, Ron. He sells info to other crooks."

"An unkind assessment, Miss Monique," Big Daddy chided her. "I merely provide means to those who are otherwise unable to transact within public channels."

Ron's head began to throb. "Well, I'm unable to whatever you said, so I'm gonna deal with you. Here's the deal: someone out there is robbing Global Justice blind with somebody who looks like me and Kim. Whoever they are, they can afford Shego's price tag, and that can't be a small number. You have to pay extra for the green. So, I need to know who that someone is, and you're going to tell me."

Big Daddy mulled over the thought with a forkful of cake. He chewed, swallowed, and dabbed the corners of his mouth with a silk napkin provided by Blondie. Then he spoke. "I am familiar with the situation of which you speak. You may be interested to know that I had dealings with that individual rather recently regarding the locations of Global Justice's new 'Evidence Lockers.'"

The table rattled as Ron nearly climbed over it in anticipation. "Yeah? Was it Drakken? Or maybe the Seniors? They've hired Shego before."

"No."

"Then who?" Ron exploded.

Big Daddy shook his head. His jowls swung to and fro. "You misunderstand, Mister Stoppable. This is not the exchange segment of our transaction. This is the negotiation. Information is a valuable commodity, my young friend. What would you offer in return?"

Ron looked around, confused. "What would I offer? Dude, I'm the hero. You're the bad guy. You tell me what I want to know or I beat you up. Don't you know how this works?"

"In point of fact, Mister Stoppable, I know how 'it' works far better than you do." Big Daddy folded his napkin and draped it over his cake. "I am not one of your muscular menaces. I am no mad scientist with aspirations of conquest through physical threat. I do not subscribe to your childish game of hero and villain. And I assure you that your threat of violence does not intimidate me in the least."

Blondie lifted her hands from her lap, revealing to Ron and Monique a brief glimpse of her pearl-handled pistol, and the lengthy silencer capping its muzzle. Presumably, she had pointed it at them the moment they sat down, out of sight beneath the tablecloth. She did so again, drawing no notice from the rich and affluent partiers around them.

Monique's face grew ashen. Her hand found Ron's in his lap, and crushed his fingers in fear while Big Daddy's smile returned.

"So you see, Mister Stoppable, I am not an enemy to be punched. I am a businessman to be convinced. So I ask you again. What would my compensation for this most valuable information be?"

Ron gnashed his teeth and glared. His eyes flickered back to the VIP table across the ballroom, where Team Go enjoyed the celebration in their honor. Ron knew he could avoid Blondie's shot and beat the tar out of both mobsters without breaking a sweat. But any kind of brawling would draw too much notice. And what if the gun was aimed at Monique?

Big Daddy watched Ron eyeing the VIP table. His smile broadened with the birth of an idea. "Actually, Mister Stoppable, I believe I can accommodate both your and my expectations for this exchange. I have a payment in mind which I believe you are uniquely equipped to provide."

"If you mean Monique, then I think I'll have to say no," Ron said.

"What do you mean, 'you _think_?'" Monique shot archly.

He laughed. "No, Mister Stoppable. I had something else in mind."

"My winning smile?"

Big Daddy grinned like a child on Christmas morning. He slid back from the table and pointedly cleared his throat. Then he threw his hands in the air and adopted a panicked expression. "Heavens! It's the dreaded terrorist, Ron Stoppable, here to kill us all!" he cried.

Blondie cut the air with a scream worthy of Hollywood's worst horror remake.

For half a second, everything froze. The music stopped, and conversation died, leaving Ron the focus of a tempest of silence. Every eye in the ballroom shot to their table, piercing Ron's brilliant disguise to find the face plastered on every newscast for the last forty-eight hours. Then the ballroom erupted into mass hysteria.

As the crowd rippled away from Ron's table, Team Go rose as one. Hego rattled the floral arrangements on their own table as he jumped atop it and surveyed the situation. His brothers chose the calmer route, standing and running around the table. As the crowd cleared from the ballroom, the source of the panic became evident. "Is that…Stoppable?" Hego said, amazed.

The Wego twins flashed and multiplied, stacking themselves for a better view over the panicking partygoers. "It is Ron!" they harmonized.

The room emptied, fading into silence, and leaving Ron and Monique to stand alone beneath Team Go's scrutiny. A glance confirmed that Big Daddy and Blondie had vanished with the crowd. Ron quashed his murderous thoughts of the pair. He smiled so hard at the approaching Team Go that his mustache came unseated from his lip. "Ha! Um, hey, guys. Sweet party. Go Team Go?"

"I can't believe it!" tall, imperious Mego announced. "Why would you come to a party for the city's only super heroes? I would never be that boneheaded! How stupid can you get?"

Backing away slowly with Monique in tow, Ron muttered through his smile, "Oh, we might just find that out…"

* * *

Gloved hands rattled against cell bars as their owner calmly strolled through the prison. As the prison alarm spread, the lights overhead snapped on, chasing her down the hall. She smiled at the groggy faces appearing behind the bars in search of the ruckus's source, only to lose their sleepiness to awe. "Isn't this more fun than sneaking?" Kim Possible asked her partner. 

Ron Stoppable glowered. "This is incredibly stupid. We could have come in and out of his window without anyone seeing us. Instead, you blow a hole in the wall and waltz in."

"Oh, bitch, bitch, bitch," teased Kim. She looped her hand around his waist, a move that startled him out of his grump. The surprises kept coming when he felt her hand drop playfully into his back pocket. "A little exposure can only help us right now. Besides, I like people seeing us like this. It feels…nasty."

Ron shivered and pulled away. A sense of uneasiness rubbed him raw from the inside. As more faces drifted toward the bars they passed, he shivered again. "Whatever. Let's just grab the blue freak and go. This place gives me the creeps," he said.

Silently counting, Kim skipped down the hall until she came to the desired cell. Her black mission top swelled with delight. Wisps of smoke trailed from her gloves before she noticed and snuffed them in a fist. "I have so been looking forward to this," she uttered.

She spread her hands at the bars. Then she thought better of it, and checked her utility belt. With two swipes of a deadly cutting laser, she melted through the cell's bars, letting them clang noisily onto the stone floor. "Candygram for Doctor D," she called cheerily into the dark cell.

If surprise could be measured seismically, Richter scales across the globe would have lit up with Kim Possible's reaction to the sight of another Kim Possible emerging through the cell's ruined bars. The ninja that followed this second Kim had a similar reaction, as did the Ron standing at the first Kim's side. Both pairs of teens stood in the prison hall, awash in floodlights and sirens blaring through the window, staring at each other in search of words.

The second Kim, dressed in purple, regained her senses first. She lifted her jaw from the ground and shaped it into a defiant jut. She recognized the other Team Possible for what they were at once, and felt her innards alight. "Nice outfit," she uttered to her doppelganger.

"This has got to be the least likely thing that has ever happened, anywhere, ever," the first, classically-dressed Kim deadpanned. "I mean, seeing the other doofus was bad enough, but you too?"

"Ron-san?" whispered Yori, staring at him in disbelief. His gaze met hers, and widened.

Drakken emerged from the cell, momentarily catching his jumpsuit on the jagged edge of a bar. When he looked up, his fear gave way to confusion, and then to indignation. Flying a finger at the foursome, he bellowed, "Kim Possibles?"

The Kim's shared one thought, which they enacted at the same instant. Both leapt at each other with shouts and martial aerobatics. Legs outstretched, fists clenched, brows lowered, they flew. Each blocked the other's foot and landed a breath's breadth apart. Fists met forearms, feet struck air, as Kim and Kim launched into a battle for the history books.

Yori, Ron, and Drakken stood spellbound by the fight. All thought of their respective missions fled from the teens at the sight of Kim Possible fighting herself. Trembling, Ron fixed his gaze on the purple-shirted Kim, watching her move, watching her fight. His breath fell in time with hers. He gasped when she did. He exhaled when she shouted. It wasn't until he noticed Yori's strange look that he touched his face and found a smile on his lips.

The ninja's scrutiny dove beneath Ron's smile. What she found there hardened her expression and made fists of her hands. "You are not Ron-san," she uttered. "Who are you? What is your purpose here?"

"Who cares?" Drakken squealed, clapping. "Either way, I get to see Kim Possible get the tar beaten out of her. Go for the knees! Bite her! Bite her!" he cheered.

Kim-in-purple flew over Kim-in-black's kick with a spring from her hands that made her elbow raise holy hell. As she landed on her feet, she took the pain, balled it in her hand, and planted it all in the other Kim's stomach. The other Kim staggered back, giving purple Kim room to breathe.

"I can't believe a cheap knockoff like you fooled Global Justice," purple Kim snapped.

"Who says I'm the fake?" Kim-in-black wheezed. "Maybe I'm just the Kim you should be. What you were always meant to be." With a sick grin, she said, "I'm the real one. The one that's living up to her true potential. They made me because you weren't good enough, or strong enough. But I'm—"

"You're two inches taller than me, Shego," Kim said flatly.

The Kim-in-black stood up, dropping her stance with a shrug. "Worth a shot," she said. She swept the fiery mane off her head and tucked it underarm. Ebony hair rolled out from underneath, unfurling to her waist. Without the wig and its complex micro-projectors, her skin faded into a powdery white, and her features reverted back to her natural state. With a twist of her dark green lips, Shego said, "But be honest, it was the real pair of tits that gave it away, right? I tried, but I just couldn't bind them enough to look like yours."

Kim grimaced. "Please. After all these years, I'd recognize your fighting style if I was blindfolded. Which, by the way, wouldn't stop me from winning this fight."

Distant doors slammed, echoing down the hall with a metallic resonance that soon became lost in a flurry of boot steps. From the sound of things, Shego knew they would be up to their necks in guards momentarily.

Her gloves disintegrated in a rush of green fire. "Will this even the odds, Princess?" she said, sneered, and blasted.

Kim flipped around the green blasts. The pain throughout her body persisted, but she suppressed it with a rush of adrenal nostalgia. As bad as she felt physically, it eased her weary soul to finally be back on familiar ground, dodging Shego's fire. More than that, it felt good to finally be in a situation where she knew who the real villain was. The impending heroics were like a salve on her spirit.

Jets of green framed Kim's acrobatics. "Your aim looks a little rusty, Shego," she taunted.

Shego's smile rang warning bells in Kim's mind. "Not really," Shego retorted.

Kim looked back. Her stomach bottomed out at the sight of a dozen locks on a dozen cells glowing red hot. The metal melted like butter. Without the locks to hold them, the cell bars slid aside, allowing two dozen orange jumpsuits to emerge into the hall. Kim vaguely recognized half of them. Judging by their sneers, they recognized her, too.

"See, this is a special wing, Kimmie. They wouldn't stick Doctor D just anywhere. The warden likes to keep all his 'special' inmates here, so he can bring VIPs through, like it's a zoo or something. There are all kinds in here. Killers. Rapists. Con men," Shego explained, leaning back against the wall.

A tide of orange rolled upon Kim faster than she could escape. It poured from all sides, converging on her, grabbing her, throwing her to the ground. Plenty of people warranted punishment comparable to Drakken's. A large percentage of them didn't even wear disfiguring scars or bizarre skin tones or masks or helmets.

"And here you are, a real paragon of justice, right in arm's reach. And an actual woman to boot. That's two things they've been wanting to wrap their stubby little hands around all in one cute little package."

As dozens of hands descended upon her, Kim realized that percentage looked even larger in person.

* * *

Ron backed away slowly from his worst case scenario brought to life, dragging Monique with him by the elbow. They bumped into a table, rattling its vase and flatware, and were forced to stop their retreat from the advancing Team Go. Nervousness shimmied in Ron's smile as he raised his hands. 

"Guys, you would not believe the week I'm having. But I really hope you will anyway. It's kind of a fun story, if you're not me," he stammered. "See, it all started—"

Hego cut his explanation short with a commanding tone. "Ron, you've been all over the news. You stole a WMD, broke into a Global Justice facility—"

"That wasn't us!" Ron cried indignantly.

"—stole a hover jet, incapacitated a GJ tactical squad—"

Flop sweat swamped Ron's brow. "Okay, see, those ones might be slightly more accurate." Out of the corner of his mouth, he muttered to Monique, "Get ready to run."

She glanced down at her strappy high heels. The moment she needed to remove them would be two moments longer than they had at the moment. "That's really not going to work," she muttered back.

Mego rolled his eyes. His purple uniform swelled with self-importance. "You're not really thinking of running, are you? I mean, honestly, do you think you can escape us? Especially me? You're just the sidekick."

The Wego twins doubled, and then doubled again, spreading a red glow behind their brothers that coalesced into a blockade of tall teens. "Hey Mego, put a cork in it," one Wego said, and another piped in, "How about we catch him first, and then scold him?"

Team Go closed around the teens, cutting off all avenues of escape. They remained just out of reach, cautiously assessing the danger that the eveningwear teens might present. Monique swallowed a burning ball of panic and hissed to Ron, "Do something! Use your magic!"

Ron could think of nothing he wanted to do less. Just the thought of summoning up that repulsive red glow made his stomach flip. But it did give him an idea. "No, you use your magic. Pull the tablecloth out."

"What?"

"Just do it!"

His biting hiss spurred Monique into action. Beneath the watch of the flabbergasted Team Go, she turned and yanked the tablecloth of the table behind them. The satin cloth slipped underneath everything on the table, leaving it rattled but unmoved. Even the silverware stayed as she swept the cloth away.

Mego cocked his brow. "What on Earth was that?"

"Um, ta-da?" Monique said with a shaky smile.

Groaning, Ron stepped to the next table. "No, not like that. Like this!"

Ron tore the tablecloth up and away. Plates flew like saucers. Forks and knives spun in all directions. The centerpiece flipped once and then shattered on the floor, spewing water and flowers into a decorative mess. The tablecloth fluttered from Ron's hand and into the air, where it cast a dancing shadow in the chandelier's light.

Hego glanced at the mess, and then at the fluttering cloth, bemused. "Cute," he said. "But that won't absolve you of capitol…hey, where'd they go?"

The floor stood empty, save for the strewn table settings. Not a trace of the teens remained. Even the sixteen eyes shared between the Wegos hadn't caught sight of their escape. Hego twisted around in frantic search. He heard a tiny yelp, little more than a squeak, and looked behind him toward the ballroom's grand staircase.

Monique clenched her eyes and clung tighter to Ron as he ran up the staircase banister with her in his arms. His shoes squeaked against the polished crystal. He sprinted and clutched her to his chest, brow lowered in concentration, coattails flying behind him. Monique took one look at the dizzying height beneath them, at the slippery banister upon which Ron treaded, and buried her face back in his chest.

Coiling his legs, Hego left his brothers with a tremendous leap, trailing blue glow through the air. He crushed divots into the exquisite tile of the upper balcony just as Ron hopped up from the banister's end. The blond skidded at the sight of Hego blocking his way. The rest of Team Go thundered up the stairs in hot pursuit.

"Oh, wow, that was cool. I mean, uh…" Ron faltered, looking around while Hego approached. Stepping back, he swung Monique around to stand in front of him. His arm crossed her collarbone. "Don't come any closer, dude! I've totally got a hostage!"

"What?" Monique exclaimed.

Hego paused, frowning. "Ron, that doesn't make any sense. She's with you."

"Yeah, well, beggars can't be choosers," Ron said.

Monique groaned and rolled her eyes. "I am so going to beat your ass for this. You know that, right?" she shot over her shoulder.

Hands raised, Hego took several steps back. "Okay, son, okay. Let's not get crazy here. After all, you're one of us, right? A hero. Or at least, a sidekick. No need to do anything rash, right?"

"Okay, number one, I'm at least a 'partner' now, okay? There have been several missions that I've taken an active fighting role in, which is way above and beyond mere sidekickery," snapped Ron, who backed away with an annoyed and clearly unthreatened Monique in his clutches. "And two, why is everybody so sure KP and me are bad guys?"

"Could it be the hottie you're holding 'hostage' right now?" Monique asked sardonically.

Ron's eloquent retort fell apart when a purple action figure flipped onto his shoulder and slithered between his chest and Monique's back. That action figure grew into full-sized Mego, who staggered Ron back with a shove. Ron watched a simultaneous shove knock Monique into Hego's tree-trunk arms. Then a wave of red bodies crashed over Ron, forcing him to the floor.

Writhing in a mob of himselves, Wego pinned Ron's limbs to the ground. "I've got him!" his selves harmonized.

Monique kicked and screamed bloody murder, throwing the skirt of her lustrous dress every which way while Hego pinned her to his chest with one arm. Her best efforts didn't faze him in the slightest. He looked down upon the blond head protruding from the pile of his brothers, and said, "As an official deputy of the city of Go City, it is my duty to take you into custody on suspicion of assault, larceny, reckless endangerment, treason…"

"Ron!" Monique screamed. "Ron, get up!"

The list continued from Hego's mouth. Ron wondered if it might go all the way back to the time in third grade, when he lifted up Bonnie's skirt on the playground because Brett Bretterson swore that girls keep their control panels there. He also wondered how detrimental having eight teenagers piled on top of his favorite kidney would affect its performance. But most of all, he thought about how utterly he had screwed up the mission.

"Ron. You have to get up!"

Kim had been the one to rescue them from Wade's house. Wade and Monique had gotten him out of Middleton. Yori had saved his sister at least twice so far. What had he done? Lost consciousness, healed an enemy, and lost a fight to himself.

"Ron!"

There was another Ron out there, somewhere. A better Ron. It didn't matter where he came from. Ron just knew that, when it came down to it, he hadn't been able to even be the best 'Ron' he could be, because someone beat him at it. How was he supposed to do anything knowing that someone was a better Ron than he was?

Glowing red, the Wegos doubled again, just to make sure the dangerous criminal underneath them wasn't going anywhere.

Who was he to help Kim? Or save anybody? Who did he think he was?

Lost in the Wegos' glow, another red light emerged to cover Ron.

"…one will be appointed to you," finished Hego. He looked down through Monique's frazzling curls, and asked, "Have you heard and understood these rights?"

Monique didn't bother glaring up at Hego. She clutched at his arm, leaned forward, and bellowed, "RON!"

Ron felt a burning sensation in his palm, which was pinned painfully next to his head with a Wego over his arm. Rolling his cheek against the floor, he caught sight of the makeup in his palm burning away to reveal the green image in his skin. The symbol of the Monkey King flashed before being swallowed in light the color of blood.

Who was he? That wasn't the question at all.

_What_ was he?

Rage and strength surged through him, cleansing his body of the sniveling weakness from which it suffered. The Wego pile atop him felt this surge and bolstered their numbers yet again, becoming a veritable pile of gawky teenagers in red spandex. Their duplicative efforts, fantastic though they were, were all in vain. Beneath them, the despondent Ron Stoppable had ceased to be. What remained, they could not hope to contain.

Ron stood up. The simple motion wrought no effort from his muscles awash in crimson. Yet the Wego duplicates over him flew in all directions as if thrown by an explosion.

Hego watched the former sidekick toss an army of Wegos aside with as little effort as Hego himself might have. Ron started walking toward him, glaring at him with eyes cast in deep red. At first he wondered if Ron had stolen Wego's Go Glow. But that shouldn't have made him strong. "Mego!" Hego barked.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm on it," his younger brother snapped. Mego jumped and shrank, sailing toward the flapping jacket of Ron's tuxedo. "Get ready for the ol' 'Ants in the Pa—'"

The aura around Ron reshaped itself, extending into a claw that grabbed Mego from the air. When the purple hero grew into his full size, the claw grew accordingly. He gasped and writhed, but the insubstantial grasp could not be fought. It pitched him back over the balcony rail, where he disappeared toward the floor below. His scream ended in a brevetted crunch that clenched Hego's stomach.

And Ron just walked on. He hadn't even slowed during Mego's attack. As he approached, the claw shrank back into the light roiling around him, Hego swore he heard a phantasmal hooting sound emanating from the energy.

Monique had fallen still and silent in the space of Ron's escape. Her shout became a shaky whisper. "R-ron? What…what's…?"

Ever the hero, Hego cast Monique aside and lunged for Ron. His thick arms were poised to pin the boy to the floor. Tactics spun behind Hego's scowl, diving and revising his best options to subdue this formerly hapless threat.

Hego never reached Ron. The skinny blond vanished from Hego's closing grasp without a trace. As he stumbled forward, Hego felt excruciating pain arc up his spine. His entire left side went numb. He crashed to the floor with a scream, his nose landing inches from Ron's shoe, the mirrored surface of which reflected his twisted expression of pain.

Ron curled the hand he'd used to jab Hego's nerve cluster and raised it like a hammer. A chorus of shouts stopped him from crushing Hego's skull. He looked up and flew into an acrobatic blur as five, ten, twenty Wegos dove at him from all directions.

"Give it up, sidekick!" one Wego snarled in Ron's ear as he managed to latch an arm around Ron's throat.

Another Wego thrust his shoulder into Ron's stomach, knocking them both to the floor. "Not even Hego can stop this many of us—"

Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.

Wegos flew from the melee centered on Ron. Each one left at the merest touch of his blows, which broke bone with such force that the sound echoed through the empty ballroom. Those Wegos at the edge of the melee saw their duplicates breaking at Ron's lightning blows and tried to shore their numbers in a blaze of desperate Go Glow. But Ron's crimson aura spread from his hands in a wave that extinguished the glow from their bodies. His hands did the rest.

As the last Wego fell, Ron felt a heavy impact against his back. He hurtled over the edge of the balcony through its railing, riding Hego's shoulder tackle through a spray of marble masonry. They fell together and cratered the dance floor. Tile rolled in waves off the impact, leaving them to rest against rough foundation concrete.

Hego struggled to his feet. His left side still felt numb and sluggish, and Go Glow or not, the fall had still hurt. He reasoned that if he felt so out of sorts, Ron must have taken it worse. When he looked up, he put aside his reasoning for some justified despair, and saw Ron rise smoothly from the concrete.

"I've gone easy on you so far, son," Hego gasped. "Don't make me use my real strength."

The rips in Ron's tuxedo were the only signs of the fight on Ron. He tilted his head in an expression of curiosity. The crimson light around him lifted his hair as if it were blown in a tempest. His eyes burned hatefully.

"Show me," Ron said.

A fight for justice became a fight for survival. Hego lurched forward with a punch aimed to collapse Ron's jaw. He struck the trailing edge of Ron's aura instead, too slow to hit anything else. Crackling energy snared his arm with a grasp like a million icy pinpricks.

Desperate, Hego swung his free hand back at Ron, who caught the blow one-handed. Hego's punches had demolished entire buildings, and Ron caught them as though they were wiffle bats.

Ron grasped Hego's arm with both hands. His aura held the rest of Hego at bay. Deep down, Hego heard that same haunting hooting as when the roiling light had tossed Mego. He didn't have time to consider it, because Ron folded his forearm back upon itself, snapping both bones clean in half.

Hego threw his head back and howled, collapsing in pain while Ron considered the broken arm in his hands with clinical detachment. He let the limb drop, and picked Hego up by the neck. The massive man dangled in Ron's grasp. The roiling aura around Ron snuffed out Hego's Go Glow. As Ron's grip tightened, Hego's eyes bulged. His struggles weakened until he fell limp, and swayed in the force of Ron's aura.

Ron felt the contours of Hego's vertebra beneath his fingers and the bulge of Hego's windpipe under his thumb. He had but to make a fist, and Hego would be no more. It would be easy, like crushing a wadded tissue, like gripping a stress ball.

Someone new to the fight grabbed Ron's arm. His aura poised itself to rip the newcomer apart. But then he recognized her. "Ron, stop it," Monique begged, yanking on his arm with her entire body. "You beat him. Let him go!"

He looked back at Hego. The hero's face turned blue above Ron's hand. Not his Glow blue, but a sickly shade of asphyxiation. His eyes rolled back into their sockets. It would be so easy.

"This isn't right, Ron. Let him go!"

Right? He was beyond questions of right and wrong. His power placed him above right and wrong. He was the Monkey Master, self-justified in his actions by right of power. He was…

Dear God, he was Monkey Fist.

Ron dropped Hego with a gasp. The Team Go leader flopped onto the ground facedown. As Monique rushed to check Hego's pulse, Ron clawed at the light around his body. He tamped it down as if on fire. The power resisted at first, but begrudgingly obeyed, and snuffed at his frenzied thoughts.

"He's breathing," Monique said, and sighed. She looked back at Ron sitting on the crater's edge, and asked, "What the hell was that? You nearly killed him!"

His mouth flapped in reply. Before it found words to vocalize, both teens heard enthusiastic applause that drew their attention across the floor. Big Daddy Brotherson stepped gingerly onto the battlefield with Blondie in tow. His jowls were pulled back in a smile. "Simply marvelous!" he cheered.

Rage pulled Monique to her feet, but cooled when she remembered Blondie's pearl-handled pistol. "Just what the hell do you think you were doing, selling us out like that? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't have Ron alphabetize your body right now." Truthfully, she wanted nothing less than to see Ron fight again, and hoped her face withheld that fact.

"But then, my dear, you would be denying me the opportunity to fulfill my end of the bargain," Big Daddy said cheerfully. Glancing back at the broken table cradling a broken Mego, he added, "And I would feel remiss in neglecting to reward such fantastically entertaining restitution."

Ron rose shakily to join Monique in the faceoff. "I'm sorry, I'm still a little confused. And pissed. Mostly pissed. How exactly did we pay you?"

Big Daddy snapped his fingers. Blondie handed him a glossy printout. From where she produced it, the teens could only guess, as she carried no folder or bag, and they hadn't seen it beforehand. Their confusion grew as Big Daddy handed Ron the page, and then pressed a pen into his hand. The printout, Ron discovered, was a grainy image of himself bringing Hego to his knees on the balcony with a single stroke of his hand, as shot from overhead. A timestamp sat in the photo's corner.

"Sign the photo for me," Big Daddy said. "I would consider the autographed humiliation of Go City's premiere heroes more than enough payment for the information you desire."

Ron's hand moved the pen across the page mechanically. His astonished stare never left the smug smile on Big Daddy's face. He couldn't even bring himself to look back at Hego, or Mego, or up at the strewn Wego duplicates on the balcony. "Dude, you are sick," he spat, and shoved the photo into Big Daddy's man-breasts.

"Tut-tut, Mister Stoppable. No need for judgment." Big Daddy handed the photo back to his assistant. Then he drew a small, folded slip of paper from his tuxedo jacket. "I am but a humble businessman, after all."

Ron snatched the paper from Big Daddy's fat grasp. He stuffed it in his jacket pocket, and snarled, "Yeah? Well, I don't like your business, and I don't like being played, and I really don't like you. When I'm done with this mess, I'm gonna—"

"What?" Big Daddy's fat face stretched wider. "Come and beat me up? Destroy my lair?" He made a shooing gesture in Ron's face, and then turned and walked away. Blondie followed.

Ron shook in apoplectic silence. He stared at Big Daddy's broad back, fists trembling. A spark of red flashed in his eyes. Monique caught sight of the bloody ember in his glare and tugged on his arm. "Ron, we have to go. The cops are going to get crazy in this place any second now. Please," she begged.

As Ron allowed her to drag him from the floor, he cast one last glare back at Big Daddy. "I'll be back for you one day," he said.

Big Daddy waved without turning. "I assure you, I shall have my camera at the ready," he called back.

* * *

_Damn it all, I just changed this shirt._

The thought came unbidden to Kim while dozens of hands clawed every part of her. A mad rush of prisoners raged right above her. Convicts of every crime imaginable shoved each other to lay a hand on the teenager responsible for their incarceration. Hands tore her clothes and yanked her hair and groped her breasts and pulled her lips. Blood bubbled up where their fingernails broke her skin. One of them ripped the dressings off her arms, exposing raw burns to their filthy touch.

"Kim-san!" she heard Yori scream above the yowl of the mob.

Yori could save her. A few well-placed strokes from her katana would forever end the nightmare of hands enveloping her. But then Shego would get away. Her and whoever was impersonating Ron. This could be their only chance.

"Stop Shego!" Kim screamed. She lost the rest of her breath to a fist planted in her stomach.

Yori pulled back from the fray, her gaze returning to the pale woman in Kim's old clothes, and to the faux-Ron at her side. Shego grinned and folded her arms. Her attention was obviously split between the young ninja and the brawl currently tearing Kim apart.

The fake Ron looked away from the fight, trying to hide his concerned expression. When his eyes stopped on Yori, they widened, as if seeing her for the first time. "You?" he said in a whisper.

In a flash of metal, Yori's katana appeared between them, guided by deft hands and an almond glare. "Surrender," Yori commanded them, forcing herself to ignore Kim's plight. "I will offer no further chances. You—"

A detached toilet seat cracked Yori across the back of her head. Doctor Drakken cocked the seat for another blow as he watched Yori slump limply to the floor. Its job done, he tossed his seat back into the cell and skipped over Yori with wide arms. "Shego! You finally came back to break me out! It's about—"

Shego punched the dead center of his face. His nose collapsed in a spray of blood and whimpering. Drakken dropped prone, reeling, and then gagged on Shego's boot planted in his throat. One added ounce of pressure from the boot would have crushed his windpipe. She bent down carefully, sneering at his choked confusion.

"I'm not here to save you, dumbass. I'm kidnapping you. Oh, and consider the nose a down payment on the full-body beating I owe you."

The distant thump of boots was distant no more. Shego looked up and saw a wave of guards pouring down the hall, drowning itself out with incoherent demands for surrender. She punched Drakken again for good measure, and for fun, and then lifted his bulk onto her shoulders. "Red, let's go!" she snapped.

Her partner paused over the unconscious ninja. His hand froze halfway to her face. He looked up and answered, "Uh, right," before following Shego.

The ten guards running to the scene saw a pair of intruders retreating down the hall with one prisoner, but their priority lay first with the prisoners mobbed around something on the floor. Nightsticks readied, they sprinted at the orange cluster.

A bestial howl arose from inside the mob, freezing time itself. Guard and convict alike stopped for one split instant at the sound. Like a jungle cat's roar, like mortal fury put to sound, the howl rang against stone walls.

Then a convict in the mob flew off the end of a boot and struck the bars of his cell with a clang. Another followed, thudding meatily against the wall. Then another. Then two. The mob dissolved into a spray of bodies, themselves spraying blood from wherever a tempest of fists and feet touched them.

When the last convict fell unconscious, the tempest slowed into the shape of Kim. Her shoulders heaved free of her tattered shirt, beneath which blood and skin mixed freely. Animal rage made her eyes cruel as they darted through the hall.

Slowly, cautiously, the lead guard approached her, his nightstick lowered. This redheaded girl was obviously one of their intruders, but she was barely clothed, and looked to be standing only by sheer force of adrenaline coupled with the absence of a breeze. Her entire body was one giant wound, a mixture of bruising, burns, cuts, and probably hairline fractures. "Easy, miss. Just take it easy," he drawled, and drew a zip-cuff from his belt to secure her.

One of his subordinates squinted, and asked, "Wait, isn't that Kim Possible?"

The mention of her name woke Kim from her heaving respite. She broke the lead guard's jaw with a kick that lifted her into another kick aimed for her namer's left temple. By the time the guards realized she was attacking them, half of them were unconscious. By the time they resolved to do anything about it, all of them were.

Kim dropped to the floor in a crouch as the last guard collapsed. A groaning tensed her fist for another blow. She saw Yori stirring, and rushed to her side. "Where are they? What happened to Drakken?" she demanded.

Yori awoke to two headaches, one of which loomed over her asking questions. Worse than any pain was in knowing that she had been blindsided by Drakken. That shame would cling to her and her descendents. "They…escaped," she moaned.

The pieces began to fall into place, painting an ugly picture that chilled Kim's blood. Shego had stolen the Entropy Cannon from GJ. Now she was breaking Drakken out of prison. The last time Shego and Drakken had gotten hold of the Entropy Cannon, they had vaporized a good chunk of the Tri-City area, and nearly killed her to boot.

"If Shego came here for Drakken, we have to make sure she doesn't get to him. Come on." Kim dragged Yori off the floor and into a run with a single yank.

Stumbling after Kim, Yori glanced back at the carpet of bodies behind them. Orange convicts and gray guards both littered the hall, united in their collective reason for bleeding. When Yori turned back, she saw a look on Kim's face that unsettled her immaculate calm. "You incapacitated the guards, Kim-san," she said.

Kim didn't glance back. Her hair flew behind her with the urgency of her steps. "They would have locked us up, too. I didn't have a choice."

"You did not even try explaining the situation." Yori didn't necessarily disagree with Kim's choice. But that Kim had come to the choice so directly startled Yori. These weren't trained agents firing on little girls. They were prison security, not front-line soldiers, and even a glance of Kim's handiwork told Yori how little Kim cared for the distinction. That kind of ruthlessness was nothing new to the ninja, but for some reason it made her uneasy to see it in Kim.

Kim's glare hardened. "We're way past explaining," she said.

They rounded the corner and found Shego slicing through windows of bars and glass at the end of the corridor. The prison yard beyond the window was mad with searchlights and sirens, which probably made the process of finding intruders more difficult than it had to be.

Shego's silhouette stood out against the white wash of the searchlight. Her eyes and hands flashed when she looked back and spotted Kim and Yori. Drakken lay in a heap at her feet.

"Stop!" Kim bellowed. She mashed the dial on the side of her watch. The watch face flashed once while she lifted her hands into fists.

Shego turned back and sneered. "Yeah, how about 'no?'" she said.

Kim didn't see the non-Ron until the shadows in the hall leapt at her. Forced to stop in mid-charge, Kim jumped back into a low stance. Her glare she aimed up at the falsified face of her boyfriend melting out of the shadow.

Yori faltered, half-turning from her charge. "Kim-san!" she cried.

"Get Drakken!" Kim yelled before a fight swallowed her whole. The non-Ron pushed her back from Shego with a flurry of kicks that took every ounce of speed she had left to avoid. His last kick struck her cross-block with such force that she slid three feet back and lost all sensation in her arms.

Non-Ron smiled at her and lowered his foot. His arms hung loose in kung fu readiness as he stepped toward her. "You can't imagine how long I've been waiting for this," he said.

Kim shook out her arms. "You can't imagine how little I care," she retorted.

They circled each other, matching step with step. Kim watched him move and felt a stab of déjà vu. His drifting hands and smirky expression made the knot in her stomach tighten.

"I have to hand it to you," Kim said, keeping her guard up. "You're a hell of a lot better at impersonations than Shego. Who are you under that crappy wig? Anybody I know? What's your name?"

"Father won't let me have one yet," the non-Ron replied, equally cautious. "He says I have to take yours."

"Flattering and creepy. But the only thing you're going to take is a beating."

Non-Ron started to lunge, spurring Kim into a cartwheel. She landed on her hands and saw her mistake. He had feinted. Upside-down, she felt his heel hammer her side, and she fell into a roll that almost brought her back to her feet. As she lay on the floor, listening to her kidney's death throes, his boot filled her vision. A quick jerk of her head saved her face. He stomped on her hair instead.

Kim flexed her stomach and returned the favor to his back, kicking him off her hair. She kept her feet going up and over until she rolled back into a crouch. Non-Ron was already coming at her. She leapt and kicked.

Nothing about his fighting style made sense. He ducked when she expected him to block. He flipped when she wanted him to dodge. One minute, he was everywhere at once, impossible to hit. The next, he was in her face, bombarding her with an aerial array of kicks that made her feel like she was fighting a mirror.

It wasn't until her lungs and throat burned with ragged breath that Kim realized she was losing. Two days without sleep and countless fights had caught up with her. Her legs and arms dragged. She could barely move them enough to block, and counterattack was out of the question. Her mind screamed at her muscles to move, to punch. Her blood boiled with rage at the sight of this faker's broadening smile. But though her spirit was willing, her flesh had lost the battle to time and punishment.

One punch penetrated her defenses and laid her roughly to the ground. She tried to get up. She had to get up! But she couldn't breathe. His foot fell on top of her chest, squashing the last of her effort from her lips in a rush of air.

"Who am I? I'm the hero you're supposed to be." The non-Ron reached up and pulled of his blond crown. Trim red hair revealed itself beneath the wig, which he tossed. In the light from the searchlights sweeping past the windows, Kim saw his eyes flash green. "I'm better than you. I am you, now."

Kim looked into his eyes. She remembered the short hair she had found in Boise, a hair that mostly matched her DNA. If not for the boot on her chest, she would have gasped. She had seen those exact eyes every day of her life. They lurked in mirrors, in nighttime windows, in polished metal. Beneath those eyes, she saw the unwavering belief that no feat, no victory, nothing, lay out of reach if you simply tried.

"That's not possible," she whispered hoarsely.

"I am Possible," he told her.

By the window, Shego wrestled with Drakken's arm, trying to draw it, and the rest of him, out the window with her. Beneath the ledge of the broken window, her hover car bobbed obediently, waiting for her to deactivate its standby instructions. She would have liked nothing better, but the ninja holding Drakken's other arm hindered the process.

"Let go, you ass-faced geisha!" Shego shouted.

"You are the one with milky skin and fetish wear, villain," Yori retorted calmly, and yanked Drakken back from the window.

The object of their tag mewled in pain. "If one of you doesn't lose soon, you'll both wind up with only half a genius!"

Shego snorted. "We don't have half a genius between us now," she said. Wind hammered her back, blowing her hair around her face. "And what the hell is up with the wind?" she snarled, looking back through the billowing curtain of her hair.

Outside the window, the air shimmered and coalesced into the broad, black visage of a Global Justice hover jet. Its VTOL thrusters kicked a hot gale into Shego's stunned face, stinging tears from her eyes. The hover jet dwarfed her car by leagues, and sprouted ventral turrets that promised to separate her car into even smaller pieces.

Drakken collapsed onto Yori as Shego let go of his arm and threw herself out the window. Twisting in the air, she cried, "Red, let's GO!"

He took one last, long second to glare down at Kim. "I'm the hero now. Stay out of my way," he said.

Kim gasped and arched when the boot pushed off of her chest. She coughed and shook, and rolled onto her side to watch the redheaded non-Ron run off with her eyes and her name. Her pride demanded she rise and take both of them back. Her paranoia knew this was just the start of something so much worse than an impersonator with Kimspiration. And her body refused to do anything but trawl for oxygen.

By the time Kim could afford to ignore her lungs' needs again, the non-Ron had vanished out the window, which flashed with Shego's escaping hover car. Yori ran back to Kim and helped her up. Drakken limped behind, huffing and sweating and thoroughly confused.

"Kim-san, are you…?" Yori trailed off, unable to finish the question. Kim swayed on her feet. Her left eye had swollen shut as the entire half of her face puffed with bruise. What little remained of her shirt couldn't keep her modest, but it didn't matter. The skin underneath was the same shade of purple-black as the fabric.

Kim's eye flickered to the floodlit windows and the ominous jet beyond. "They got away?" she asked in a strong voice.

"Er, yes," Yori said, surprised Kim could speak at all. Glancing at Drakken, she noted, "But at least we kept Drakken from escaping as well."

"Yes," Drakken puffed, leaning on his knees, "I think we can all agree that my safety is most important here."

Kim punched Drakken in the dead center of his face. His squashed nose flattened further, fountaining blood all over Kim's fist. His eyes lolled in separate directions while he tilted to the floor, bereft of consciousness. Kim nearly collapsed herself, but caught herself against the opposite wall of the corridor.

"We didn't keep him from escaping. We're just making sure he escapes with us," Kim explained. Grabbing his ankle, she dragged her facedown arch-foe across the rough floor. Yori followed to the window with a curious expression. She couldn't ask over the roar of the hover jet's VTOL wash, and so bit her tongue for a quieter moment.

Bullets sparked off of the jet's underbelly. The automatic fire from the prison yard below didn't have close to enough caliber to pierce the advanced jet's paint, but it did kick up a spray of sparks and noise that kept Kim cautious. The last thing she needed was a ricochet compounding her problems, or worse, ending them. She mashed the dial of her Kimmunicator again.

The hover jet rotated its aft section as close to the prison as possible. Its cargo lift descended with a hydraulic whine, carrying with it a frightened girl who clung to the lift's control panel for dear life.

"Rufus says to tell you that he's not sure how long he can hold off all communication signals in the area. Plus, they might have a land line." Hana warbled. "At least, I think he said that. He's hard to understand when he's upset."

"Good job, both of you," Kim shouted back above the roar of the jets and the sounds of ricochets. One bullet rang too close for comfort against the hull above their heads, eliciting a scream from Hana and action from Kim. She tried picking up Drakken, but his limp bulk overpowered her exhaustion. Instead, she took Drakken by the leg and dragged him into a spin, swinging him like a track hammer. Once he picked up enough speed, Kim released him through the window and watched him bounce onto the cargo lift.

Three more ricochets tore the upper reach of the window into glass shreds. At Kim's expectant look, Yori backed up and gestured to the window. "After you," she said.

* * *

Five blocks and an hour away from the ballroom disaster, Monique poked her head out from an alley behind a Cow 'n' Chow to check again for any distant sirens. The ninja slip Ron had given the police storming the hotel's entrance seemed to have worked. Still, given their circumstances, Monique erred on the side of "safe" over "sorry." 

"That's right, the Cow 'n' Chow on Main. Take the long way around so they don't see you. You don't want to drive right past the hotel," she said into her cell phone. She listened. Then she snapped, "You've got an IQ of eleven trillion, of course you can drive stick!" She listened again. "I don't care. Figure it out. Fig…No! Figure it out, Wade!"

She snapped her phone shut and stuffed it in her handbag. Brushing up against the building's back wall, she added to the lamentable grime on her dress. It pained her to ruin something so beautiful. She pushed the thought aside and focused instead on the Ron-shaped lump sitting against the dumpster. "Ron? Are you okay?"

Ron hadn't said a word since leaving the ballroom. His silence worried Monique. Upon holing up on the alley, he'd slumped against the dumpster and sat there with his knees against his chest and his face buried behind his legs. His scrubby blond hair hid his face.

Biting back a wince, Monique ruined her evening gown forever by sitting down next to him. "I called Wade. He's coming to pick us up," she told him.

He didn't twitch. His shoulders just kept rising and falling with deep, silent breaths.

"That was pretty messed up, huh?" Monique asked shakily. She had no more adrenaline behind which to hide. It felt like she was falling apart from the inside, starting with her stomach. She hugged her arms, suddenly cold at the memory of being trapped in Hego's unbreakable grasp. "Who would've thought we would wind up fighting good guys? I mean, I know GJ is supposed to be good, but they lost their cred when they shot me dead."

Still nothing.

Monique craned her neck, trying to see past the curtain of Ron's hair. "That…That was amazing. What you did back there. The way you beat them. You…"

"I hate it."

The muffled words escaped his knees to silence Monique. She lifted her hand to rest it on Ron's shoulder, but stopped halfway. The memory of Ron holding Hego by the neck turned her innards to ice. She dropped her hand.

"I can't do this anymore, Mon," he said into his knees. "I just can't. I can't get rid of it. I can't stop it up anymore. It feels like it's going to explode out of me, like I'm gonna pop like a balloon. And every time I use it, it's like it takes something outta me. Like it's eating my soul, just being there."

"Your…your magic," Monique said. She almost felt foolish for just saying the word. Almost.

"It's too much. It's too much, and it's everywhere. It gets into everything I do, everything I think, and it won't leave me alone, and I hate it. I hate it. I **HATE IT**!"

Ron reached back and pounded the dumpster in frustration. His hand flashed red against the metal, tearing it like paper. Meaty wrappers and sluice bled out of the wounded dumpster, bathing Ron in the day's leftovers of burgers and burger-like substitutes.

It took every shred of control Monique had left to not leap up and run screaming into the night. She considered Ron carefully. On the one hand, she had watched him singlehandedly maul four (or twenty-four, depending on how you counted Wego) super heroes without breaking a sweat. She knew without a doubt that, had she not stopped him, he would have killed Hego. Ron scared the hell out of her.

On the other hand, she remembered the GJ agent in the van promising to stick her whole family in a prison cell until they wasted away. It felt like the whole world was against her, and all she had on her side was an impressionable blond with glowing red power over life and death.

Monique drew a slow breath and made a choice that disgusted her.

"Ron, your magic saved me. Twice," she said, and forced herself to rest her hand on his shoulder. His muscles were like iron, tensed to the point of tearing themselves apart. "It's the only reason we're here right now, and not cooling our heels in a cell waiting for Global Justice to pick us up and lock us away forever."

"You don't get it, Mon…"

"No, 'you' don't get it," she said, squeezing his shoulder. "Look at me. Look at me, Ron. Yesterday I had a broken arm and a hole in my chest. You fixed that. And I'm betting I'm not the only one you've done this for. You saved me. You protected me. You and this…whatever it is."

A single eye appeared through the blond curtain.

Stifling the shake in her voice, Monique leaned closer. She began to pick and brush the garbage off of him. She felt him stiffen, but then gradually relax at her touch. "Ron, you have something amazing inside of you. And, yeah, it's a little scary. But people don't get something like that by accident. I think…I think maybe you're supposed to have it. And if you're supposed to have it, you're supposed to use it. You just need…practice."

Both eyes appeared, red and puffy, but hopeful. "You…you really think I'm supposed to have this?" It was nothing he hadn't heard before, but the first time he had heard it from someone who didn't live on a mountaintop temple.

Monique hated herself more than she ever had as she smiled and said, "I know you can do this. And I know Kim feels the same way. We still have to find her, right?"

Drawing up with a breath, Ron nodded. He stared at the green tattoo in his palm, past it to his enormous shoes, and said, "Right. I can handle this. I can."

She pulled away from him with her phony smile intact. "So," she said, breaking the topic, "what kind of info did the tub of guts give us in exchange for all that ruckus?"

Ron dug into his pocket and produced the slip of paper. Garbage slime seeped into the paper as he unfolded it and read the single word written there. The word sparked red rage in his glower. He crushed the paper and tossed it aside, uttering its word with disgust.

"Dementor."

* * *

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" Shego snarled, and pounded on the car's yoke. "Dementor is going to have our assess on a platter for this one." 

Their car streaked through the morning sky, sailing on the colors of dawn, about which Shego couldn't give to damns. She lived perpetually in the moment where Kim Possible and her substitute sidekick got the better of them. Kim Possible had beaten her yet again, this time without ever laying a finger on her.

"This is just unbelievable. I had that blue moron in my hands. Right there! If those Global Jarheads hadn't shown up to screw everything to hell…damn it!"

The lack of accompaniment threw off her grousing tempo. She looked over at her partner. The teen stared through the windshield with a serene smile entrenched in his face, so deep that no amount of stink eye seemed to affect it.

Shego punched him on the shoulder, jarring his mind back into the car. "Hey! Red! Pay attention, will you? One of the only perks of blowing it this badly is bitching about it before the Mad you're henching for launches into a longwinded speech about how 'his nefarious whatever cannot be denied.'"

His smile turned her way. It made her teeth grind. "I have a name," he murmured.

She rolled her eyes and turned back to the sky, gripping the yoke until her knuckles cracked. "Not this bullshit again," she grumbled.

That wiped his smile clean. He scowled at her, and said, "What's your problem? You dump all over everything that's important to me. You have no idea what this means to me."

"Oh, wah, wah, wah," she sang. "Like it matters anyway. Names are a load of crap."

"Pfft. You would think that," he retorted. "Someone just gave you a name. I earned mine. You wouldn't understand."

Her hand balled up the front of his shirt and hauled his face toward her predatory scowl. "You wanna talk names, Red? Try getting handed a sexist handle by your meat-headed older brother before he drags you all over the world to save people even dumber than he is. Try having your name stuck to some of the worst, lamest people on the planet 'cause your rep's in the toilet thanks to some cheerleader in a training bra. Drag that pretty little name of yours through a decade of crap, and then tell me how much you like it."

He jutted his jaw in the aftermath of a tone that, once upon a time, curdled the blood of anyone within earshot. "My name's not Red," he said, his lips just a breath from hers.

Shego studied him for a moment. She couldn't find a single crack in his defiant face. Finally, she relaxed her hand and let him slide back into his seat. "Fair enough, Possible," she said.

Hearing someone else speak it aloud brought his smile roaring back. He grinned at Shego. The strange sensation in his gut sparked again, stronger than ever as he stared at her.

She noticed his smile and couldn't help but return it a little. Joy as pure as his was contagious to a degree which even her mood could not fight. "Yeah, yeah. So come on, kid, spill. How was it, kicking the cheerleader's ass? Must have been pretty sweet."

Possible's smile dimmed slowly as he relived the frantic seconds of his fight with Kim. His father had instilled in him, since the day he was born, what Kim Possible meant to him. She was an obstacle, a beta, obsolete. Worse, a pretender. She didn't want to save the world like Father did. She only wanted to protect its precious status quo. Above all else, Father had assured him that striking her down wasn't merely just, it was necessary.

So why did it feel wrong?

"It felt great," he said.

* * *

Kim sat heavily in the jet's pilot seat and watched Rufus snap back into his original shape. "I just saw it, and I still have no idea how you flew this thing by yourself. But great job, Rufus," she said. "You locked in our new course?" 

"Uh-huh, uh-huh!" Rufus chattered, and scampered around the top of the console.

She pulled an MRE from her oversized pocket and tore it open, and then set it on top of the console. "Here. You've earned it. I'll take over for a while."

Rufus happily poured himself into the plastic package. Horrible slurping sounds emerged from the MRE. The package trembled and died from the inside, deflating as Rufus made short work of its innards. Moments later, Kim heard snoring emerge from the package. She smiled.

Even smiling hurt. She wore a medicated patch over her eye that kept the swelling cool with a thin package of chemicals between the gauze. New patches lay at her feet in packages, waiting to be unwrapped and applied to her burns. She'd stopped by the troop bay below deck to deposit the insensate Drakken there, and had picked up new clothes and dressings.

She tossed a roll of athletic tape from hand to hand and watched the sunrise roll past the canopy. Below deck, one of her greatest enemies lay trussed up and under the watchful eye of an ally she could no longer fully trust. Whatever her reasoning, Yori had remained silent about Hana's mystical monkey complication. What else wasn't Yori telling her? And, when push came to shove, what would she do to protect Hana? Would she sell Kim out just to keep Hana out of harm's way?

In that respect, Kim realized, Drakken was more trustworthy than Yori. At least Kim could count on Drakken's treachery. With Yori, who knew?

Kim began wrapped her new dressings in tape. She said to the empty cabin, "It's okay. They aren't here."

Hana crawled out from under the copilot seat with the timidity of a wounded mouse. She watched Kim mummify her arms, and cringed. "Are you okay?" she asked.

The topical painkillers on the patches did absolutely nothing anymore. Kim hurt from head to toe twice over. Even the act of patting the pads down exhausted her and inflamed her burns. Her muscles couldn't even scream anymore. They were too tired, and just sat in her body like malignant lumps, making her regret each movement with what little pettiness they had left.

Kim's remaining eye twinkled as she forced herself to smile. "Not bad, considering. How about you?"

Hana crawled to Kim's leg and rested her head in Kim's lap. She was lucky enough to find a spot where the nerves were too deadened to hurt anymore. "I wanna go home," she whimpered.

Her hand brushed gently through Hana's hair. She sighed, and said, "Me too. You're doing a great job, Hana. That was good work with the cargo lift. You were great."

"I think I'm acrophobic," the little girl said into Kim's leg. "I got really scared up there. I…I didn't like it."

"Being high up can be pretty scary at first," Kim told her. She recalled her own love for skydiving, as well as Ron's revulsion for it. "For Stoppables, anyway. It's normal, don't worry."

"…I wet my pants."

Hana sounded so ashamed, it made Kim want to laugh and cry all at once. She just stroked Hana's hair, and said, "I'll find you some new clothes down below in just a minute. It's okay, Hana."

Hugging Kim's leg, Hana whimpered, "Can we please go home? Please?"

Kim wanted nothing more than to go back to her parents' house in Middleton, to go back to a time when she could run down the stairs and out the door to meet Ron. She wanted nothing so much as to go back to when they could just be together, when they could just **be**.

She had just broken a dangerous criminal out of prison. She had broken into a prison. She had stolen a government jet, assaulted government agents, and trashed a government facility.

"God, I hope so," she whispered.

Leaving Hana on her leg, Kim continued to wrap her arms. The athletic tape growled as it left the roll. Kim hated that sound.

**To Be Continued

* * *

**

* * *

Wow. Months and months and months between chapters. For those of you who wrote in to check on me, thank you. I haven't forgotten this story at all (to which the forty-nine pages above this hopefully attest). But these chapters take so damn long to formulate, write, and edit that I'm going to stop making promises just so I don't disappoint people who are waiting for them. And that includes me.

But I did miss the last deadline that I set for myself (January), and by a good margin, too. So, as punishment for me, and as a reward for everyone else's patience, I present to you a bonus: a deleted scene.

No, I don't know exactly how a deleted scene punishes me. Don't think too hard about it.

Now, this isn't the first time I've ever cut a scene from a story. I've done so for any number of reasons. But it is the first time I've had a scene fully written and edited before I decided to cut it. And I liked this one so much that I pulled it wholesale out of the chapter and saved it anyway. I hope you like it too.

EDIT: A big thanks to Isamu for giving this fic the once-over. Credit precisely thirteen percent of your accolades to him.

* * *

_In this deleted scene from Chapter Two, Ron visits Smarty Mart before picking up Hana from the Possibles', and encounters an old acquaintance whose advice alters the course of his relationship with Kim. Unfortunately, I had to cut the scene for length and pacing reasons._

Ron strolled through the expansive aisles of Smarty Mart, pushing his cart roughly five steps ahead of a mind-altering epiphany. Pasta boxes crawled past him as he scanned the shelves, searching among them for the noodle that best suited his fancy. "Hate to be a meany, Rotini, but you won't do," he said. "Or you. Pride cometh before a Farfalle," he added with a snicker. Picking up a box, he continued, "Hey there, Macaroni, I…" He stopped, and frowned at the pasta. After a moment's thought, he put it back. "Go away. You aren't good joke material."

_"So,"_ Monique's voice echoed through his head, _"You've got a whole house just for you…"_

He stopped and stuck his pinky in his ear. His epiphany drew closer as he wriggled a chunk of wax free. "Huh. That's weird," he muttered, flicking the wax away. "I don't usually hear voices since I got rid of those fuzzy leftovers from the fridge."

As he continued down the aisle, Monique's voice returned with, _"Nobody to keep you warm at night."_

Rufus jumped out of his pocket as they moved into the dairy section. The mole rat springboarded off of Ron's massive shoes and into an open cooler of imported cheeses while Ron leaned against the cart. "What an odd thing to remember," he mused to himself. "Huh. Do we have any milk at home?"

_"Kim is crazy about you!"_ Monique's voice cried in his ear.

Ron rubbed his jaw, staring at the rows of milk while bags and packages of cheese flew from the cooler behind him and into his cart. "How do they know that it's two percent? What if it's only one and a half percent?" Then he blinked. "Two percent of what? Is only two percent of it milk? What's the other ninety-eight?"

An ethereal sigh whistled through his head. _"You're going to make me spell it out, aren't you?"_ imaginary Monique said.

"What if it's two percent of your daily recommended milk?" said Ron. Hurriedly, he picked up and balanced three gallons of milk and wondered if he'd have enough room for a week's worth of the stuff. "Oh, man," he muttered, teetering with his armload, "I'm gonna need a lot of Hershey's Mix for this."

_"You should do it with Kim!"_ imaginary Monique yelled.

Ron turned back, setting the milk atop the overflowing amount of exotic and domestic cheeses his cart had swallowed. Rufus burrowed up through the pile to avoid being squished as Ron dumped still more milk atop his cheesy bounty. "That Hershey guy must have loved chocolate," Ron said, watching the mountain of cheese avalanche over the rim of his cart and onto the floor.

_"Hello? The Horizontal Mambo?"_

"Or maybe he just hated milk so much that he had to invent something to make it taste better," he said. Looking to Rufus, he asked, "Y'think?"

Rufus skated down the landslide of cheese and dove in to rescue the scattering packages. "Bar," he chattered back at Ron before disappearing into the piles.

_"Doin' the nasty?"_

"Oh, right," Ron said, adding more milk to the cart. "I guess the candy bar came first. Huh." Ron wiped his brow, and then looked at the contents of the dairy aisle strewn over and around his cart. He began taking more items out and stacking them on the floor to make room for still more milk, in hopes that he could stretch that two percent into a healthy allotment of milk for his family. "Why a bar? I mean, there are other, more appetizing shapes. Like rabbits. Chocolate rabbits are way better than bars."

_"Beast with two backs?"_

The dirty looks of the Smarty Mart shoppers around him didn't slow Ron in the slightest. He kept stacking cartons of milk into his cart, emptying the shelves in the process. "It's weird, isn't it? Other holidays get really specific mascots. Like Santa Claus, or Uncle Sam, or the Menorah. Easter just gets a generic rabbit. That you eat. I wonder why they don't get anyone really recognizable. Except for, y'know, Jesus."

_"Have sex with Kim, you brain-damaged sack of stupid!"_ imaginary Monique screamed through his head.

Ron jerked to a halt as the epiphany pounced on him, clawing into his brain. His armload of milk tumbled from his slackening grasp and exploded onto the sticky tile in a white tidal wave. But Ron didn't feel his pants soaking up a gallon of dairy, or the protestant squeak Rufus gave when his kingdom of cheeses became swamped. "Holy Health Class! Monique thinks Kim and I should engage in sexual intercourse!"

Activity in the aisle froze as all eyes swung around to Ron. First and foremost among his gawkers were the big brown eyes of his naked mole rat from the flooded kingdom of cheese at his feet. Ron's jaw clenched shut as he stared back at Rufus. His mind reeled with the weight of his epiphany, and his body followed after, sending his milk-soaked lower half into the emptied cheese cooler.

True, his love for Kim ranked up there with breathing and faux-Mexican fast food. And his idle male fantasies had certainly explored the concept to the extent that his morality would allow. But he'd never considered sex to be an actual possibility, to say nothing of an eventuality. Just as he'd told Monique, he expected Kim to grow bored with him long before such a thing could occur.

"Well, congratulations, Stoppable. I see you've graduated from a meat-headed klutz to cheese-headed one-man wrecking crew. How wonderful."

The irritated baritone drew Ron's eyes out of his own mind and to the square-jawed face staring him down. A mountain of a man, dressed stylishly in his plastic orange vest and armed with a mop and rolling bucket, offered a hand to help Ron out of the cooler. Ron had scarcely placed his hand in the giant's before the iron grip unseated him from the cooler with a single, jarring yank. Ron flew to his feet and bounced off of the man's chest with a yelp. "Mister Barkin?"

Steve Barkin afforded Ron one last glare before turning his efforts back to his mop. "Stoppable, I pride myself on being a company man, a man of principles and of retail," he lectured Ron while scooping up ruined cartons of milk and dripping packages of cheese, tossing the ruined mess into Ron's cart. "But in your case, I think I'm going to recommend that you find your bargain-basement prices and convenient one-stop shopping elsewhere, particularly if you're going to bring this kind of disaster with you."

Rather than rebuffed, Ron rejoiced at encountering his old teacher at his second job. "Aw, Mister B! Just the guy I needed to see. Y'see, I kind of have a problem."

Having cleared the floor of packaging, Barkin set about pushing the puddle of milk to and fro with his ratty mop. "Stoppable, that there is a solid contender for the Nobel Prize in Understatement."

"No, see, I'm kind of dating Kim. Kim Possible. You remember her, right? The girl from yesterday at graduation. Saved your life on a baker's dozen of occasions."

Barkin whirled upon Ron, drawing dangerously close. To his credit, Ron didn't so much as blink when Barkin's snorting breath rolled across his freckles. With narrowed eyes and clenched jaw, Barkin said, "I can't tell if you enjoy testing me or if you're really this big of a goof, Stoppable."

Ron smiled. "I know, I have problems telling those apart too. But seriously, I have some major mojo issues I need to man-to-man out with somebody. And nobody's manlier than you, Mister B!"

A sour look crossed Barkin's face as he pulled back and collected his mop. "Well, being that I can't go anywhere until I clean this mess up, and that I can't force you to leave without you causing a scene, I suppose I don't have any choice but to stand here and possibly, potentially, accidentally listen to you."

Barkin continued to gather up the spilled milk as Ron leaned back against the cooler, careful not to fall in again. "Like I said, we're dating now," Ron explained to the back of Barkin's head. No answer came, but that didn't bother Ron. "It happened last month after your typical end-of-the-world sitch. Only this time, I got the girl. Weird, huh? And it's been great, don't get me wrong. I love being with Kim. I mean, I love hanging out with her, and kissing her, and even just holding her hand. I…I love Kim. But sometimes—a lot of sometimes—I don't really know what to do, or what I'm doing. And it scares me. Like she's going to wake up one day and realize just who it is she's dating, and finally wise up. It's like… It's like sometimes, I feel like I shouldn't be with her. Like I don't deserve her, or something."

"You don't."

The statement held no malice, no snideness, no anger or vengeance. There was no emotion whatsoever to the words that shattered Ron's voice into a fractured stammer. When Barkin spoke, it was with his eyes to the floor, watching the milk ripple as he pushed the pool back and forth. But he was well aware of the devastation on Ron Stoppable's face as the boy struggled to squeak, "W-w-what?"

With a sigh, Barkin leaned his mop against Ron's cart and turned. "You don't deserve her, Stoppable," Barkin explained to him. "Possible is one of a kind. She has the looks and brains to take her anywhere she wants to go, to anything she wants to do. She's got charisma, modesty, and determination, more than I've ever seen. Everything she tries turns out golden, and she makes it look effortless. But you, Stoppable?"

"But… But I—"

"You just aren't." Now Barkin's tone became a faint shade of apologetic, albeit begrudgingly. "Stoppable, you're nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand. You barely squeaked out of high school with a GPA high enough for college. I don't even have to ask to know that you don't have a single plan for after whatever state school let you in finishes with you. You're just mediocre. Ordinary. And Possible doesn't deserve ordinary. She deserves extraordinary."

It was all Ron could to do maintain his composure. He stared up into the face of his mentor, whose opinions he still held highly, and willed his tight throat to open so that he could speak. "Well, I… Okay. I asked for it." He bent down and pulled at the end of Barkin's mop, much to the large man's confusion, and then extracted a gasping and irritated mole rat from the ratty cloth soaked with milk. Rufus slid into his pocket as Ron turned and straightened, determined to walk like a man. "See you around, Mister B," he said.

Ron made it two steps before he heard an explosion of frustrated breath behind him. "You're really going to do it, aren't you?" Barkin shot after him. "You lunkhead."

"What?" Ron turned, growing red-faced with anger. He had already taken enough hard truth from the man for one day, and wasn't sure he could stomach any more. "What now? Are you gonna tell me how I should invent a time machine and keep Kim from falling for me so she doesn't waste her time? Or trade faces with a better guy, so I don't have to break up with Kim but she still gets a better boyfriend? Or maybe I could find an alternate reality where—

"Stop babbling and cowboy up." The gruff order snapped Ron's jaw shut and straightened him to attention, just as it always did, and always would. Barkin marched toward him, and then circled him, as though sizing the boy up. "I can already see what you're thinking, Stoppable. You're thinking about breaking up with Possible so she can find someone who deserves her."

"Was not!" Ron protested. "And how are you reading my mind?"

"Like I read Highlights For Kids," Barkin retorted. "She chose you. She. **Chose.** You. She even went to a second-rate college instead of any one of the Ivy League schools that would have tripped over themselves to give her a free ride, just to stick by you. And you're going to ditch her because you don't cut the mustard?"

"But you said—"

"Stoppable, when you get something you don't deserve, you don't throw it away." Barkin's hard glare descended upon Ron, forcing the boy to retreat into his own collar or burn away in the man's righteous ire. "You hang onto it as hard as you can, and you thank your lucky stars that you've got it."

"But—"

"And if you want Possible to be happy, and if you want her to have someone she deserves, then get off your keister and be that man. Step up, Stoppable, and stop wasting her time."

Ron stared at Barkin for a long, contemplative minute, searching the lines of his face for any trace of jest or sarcasm. But no, he knew Barkin well enough to know when the man was playing straight with him, and that was now. "You really think I can?" Ron asked.

Barkin pulled back and resumed his mopping. "I think you have to. Whether you can or not is up to you. Now quit jawing at me, I have work to do." Ron backed away in a daze, his mind racing with this new perspective, when he heard Barkin add, "And Stoppable?" Looking back, he saw the softest expression Barkin could ever manage aimed at him. He had to look left and right, down the empty aisle, before he realized that the look was meant for him. "Not that it matters, but you turned out a lot better than I thought you would."

It was the highest compliment he could ever expect from the hard-nosed educator, and it reseeded the smile on Ron's face. "Thanks, Mister B," he said.

"You can thank me by becoming lactose-intolerant," grumbled Barkin. He wringed his mop out, splashing a gallon of watery milk into his overflowing bucket, and tried not to smile as he heard Ron whistle jauntily while he walked away.


	7. Villains

Cameron Du hunched over his desk, reading with eyes that burned in their thirty-sixth hour of sleeplessness. A mug of cold coffee sat at his elbow. A single light burned on his desk, casting a dim glow upon the office of his mentor, which he had temporarily appropriated. Were it not for the constant ache of his body, he might have mistaken this for a dream.

Each report he read could have doubled as a bestselling work of fiction: tall tales about GJ soldiers being routed by two civilians on a suburban lawn; fables about a couple of teenagers brutalizing the renowned Team Go at their own gala celebration; pure fantasy about rank amateurs blasting into a federal prison and escaping with their arch nemesis in a stolen hover jet. It all sounded so stupid when he read it in succession. He didn't believe a word of it, even while he knew every report was more or less the truth.

His office door interrupted him with a knock. Using a semi-intelligible grunt, he bade the door open. Dini entered and closed the door behind her. He was surprised to see that her black eye was entirely gone. Not covered with makeup, but healed, as if it were never there at all. Her hangdog expression, though, came as no surprise.

Du tired of her salute before her hand reached her forehead. "Report," he said.

"The Global Justice sata-net has been trawling all possible avenues of searching. Satellite imaging—"

He silenced her with an impatient wave. "Three words or less," he said.

"Nothing yet. Sir," Dini answered smartly.

Groaning, Du massaged his temples and leaned back from the fantastic reports. Three years' worth of fatigue harried his face, one year for each day since Team Possible had become Public Enemy Number One. "Very well. Keep me posted, Dini." His eyes skimmed the reports for several seconds more before noticing that Dini had not yet left.

Dini stood ramrod-straight and kept her gaze against the back wall. Both were the hallmarks of an inexperienced agent. Du could recall his own early years, serving under his mentor, sweating every word he said to her for fear of misspeaking. It was only after months of saluting and muscle-locking posture that the future Director of Global Justice had taken him aside and given him some advice.

He decided to pass that advice along to Dini. "Agent, if you keep standing and walking like that, waiting for me to notice you, you'll be using a walker by the time you're thirty. I brought you on board this investigation for a reason. If you've got something to say, pipe up. If it's bad news, throw some 'sirs' in with it."

Dini blushed lightly and relaxed her stance. "Am I to understand the Commander is giving me permission to speak freely?"

"You understand. Now sit down and spit it out."

At his gesture, Dini took the chair opposite his across the desk. "Sir," she said with a nod. "It's just that I've been thinking about our targets' motives and their recent activities."

Du raised an eyebrow, intrigued. "Oh?"

"And none of it makes sense! Sir," she added hastily. "My own experience with Stoppable is bizarre enough. But then he goes and tears up a party in Go City for no apparent reason. And Possible returns to the Boise locker just to burn it down? And then breaks out a megalomaniac who appears to have no connection to this case? I can't make sense of it, sir. It's hindering my ability to track them. I…"

She trailed off. "My time is limited, Dini," Du said warningly. "Speak freely, but especially concisely."

Taking a deep breath, Dini blurted, "Sir, I recommend that I be taken off this case and that it be assigned to a more experienced agent."

Du's frown shot straight up to the ceiling. "Are you honestly telling me that you're asking to be taken off a case that will make your entire career? A case that any other agent would give her eyeteeth for? That's asinine. Request denied."

"But sir—"

"My turn," Du said sharply, rocking her silent with his tone. "Dini, I've spent the better part of two decades dealing with situations like this. GJ's Intelligence division handles ninety percent of these cases before they happen. Do you know what the best way to diffuse these situations is?"

"Sir?'

"You make sure they don't happen. You find these lunatics and stop them from the shadows. Bankrupt them. Manipulate the local crime into swallowing them whole. Warn local authorities to nap them on trumped-up charges. Otherwise disasters like this happen, and it gets passed to GJ Tactical. Do you know what I call that, Dini?"

"Sir—?"

His features stormed. "I call that a loss. I call it an inability to outguess our opponent. Intelligence already lost when we failed to predict Possible's alliance with Dementor. We passed the buck to Tactical. Now you're telling me you want to pass the buck back to someone else?"

"Just another agent, sir. One better equipped to—"

"Bah." Du waved her voice away as if it were a foul odor. "Better equipped? There's only one person in GJ with extensive experience in dealing with Team Possible. The Director. And I'm keeping her out of this investigation for exactly that reason. Her judgment's compromised. So it's up to us to figure out the hows, whys, and wheres of this Possible problem."

He let that sink in with a moment of silence. Slowly, Dini nodded and said, "Yes, sir."

In order, Du picked up corroborating reports and slid them across the desk for Dini to see. "Team Possible and Team Go have a history. Stoppable was likely taking out what he perceived to be a potential threat to their plans. Possible could have retrieved something from Boise that she missed her first time there, and destroyed the rest to keep us in the dark as to what. She then picked up Lipsky, who has previous, extensive experience with Demens' Entropy Cannon."

Dini took each report, and then tucked them underarm to read later. "Yes, sir," she said with a nod. "Then how do we proceed from here?"

His fingers steepled into a rest for his chin. "The only thing to do is wait and watch. Given enough time, an amateur like Possible is bound to make a—"

The Communicator clipped to his belt beeped insistently. Du palmed the device and thumbed it silent. Its screen displayed a message that made his haggard face light up.

"—mistake," he finished, smiling.

* * *

Drakken looked up from the ground with pained annoyance. Leaves from the path clung in his hair. Unbothered by the feminine wrath hovering over him, he glanced back at the tripwire that had caused his misstep. "Who strings invisible wire in the middle of a deserted volcano island? It's rude, is what it is. Rude and confusing," he grumped.

Kim bent and examined the wire strung across their path. She pointedly ignored Drakken's proffered hand asking for help. The metal wire bit her finger as she traced it into the underbrush. What she found hidden there made her curse. It was a small black box staked into the ground. A red diode blinked atop the box.

"We aren't half an hour out of the jet, and you manage to screw this up. Even for you, that's impressive, Drakken. Way to go," Kim said.

Yori stood behind them both, mopping her brow with the back of her hand. The island upon which they landed swam with tropical heat the likes of which she hoped never again to see. A single, flat-topped mountain rose in the morning sky ahead of them, its broad base vanishing into the lush foliage through which they tromped. "What is that device, Kim-san?" she asked.

"It's a signal of some kind. Looks like it's been here for a while," Kim explained, pausing to lance Drakken with a glare. "There's no telling who it's transmitting to, or where they'd be coming from. We have to hurry."

Drakken stood sans assistance and dusted off his orange prison suit. "Well, maybe they're on the other side of the world. Let's think positive."

Kim shoved him forward into a stumble. "You're right. If it had been a mine, we'd all be dead by now. Let's all keep that positively in mind. Move."

They continued on in silence, save for the sweaty huffing of Drakken's beleaguered lungs. Kim and Yori kept their eyes trained to the jungle, searching for any further signs of traps, or worse, betrayal. They were on Drakken's turf now, bumbling appearances to the contrary. And after last month's near miss, Kim wasn't going to give Drakken a single inch of trust.

A thought occurred to Yori as they neared the base of the dormant volcano. "Kim-san, why would anyone set a warning device on the island?"

The question earned a sneering laugh from their guide. "Plenty of reasons. I'm one of the world's leading evil geniuses. There are plenty of people who would love to wrap their greasy mitts around my equipment. The problem is, I'm too smart for them. They can't get into my lair, so they set listening posts, waiting for someone to open it for them. This secret reserve is one of the few lairs I haven't lost to obnoxious teenage interference. No offense," he added mockingly to Kim.

She shoved him hard into a tree next to the path. His swollen nose cracked against the trunk, blinding him with pain. He howled a foul curse that questioned Kim's parentage.

"None taken," she said sweetly as she and Yori walked past.

The rough trail ended a few steps ahead in a small clearing that abutted the volcano's base. Porous boulders sat in the underbrush, which formed a tangled carpet that came up to Kim's knees. She paused at the edge of the clearing with Yori and waited for Drakken to catch up.

He staggered past her, clutching his bloody nose, his scowl burning over the top of his hands. "After my efforts with cloning certain know-it-all meddlers failed to pan out, I stored most of my equipment here. It's a bare-bones lair. More like a storage facility, really. Like my own Evidence Locker. I keep it small and hidden enough that—"

"We get it. It's small. Now invite us in already." Kim folded her arms and watched him stumble through the tall plants.

Sneering at her, Drakken kicked a specific boulder. It shuddered and then rumbled aside with the sound of grinding gears. A small, square hatch opened from underneath the boulder, with stairs leading down into inky blackness.

Drakken stepped aside and bowed mockingly. "Ladies first," he sneered.

Kim exchanged a bemused glance with Yori. "How sweet. Now get in the hole before I throw you in the hole. And if I see you go for anything or press anything, or do anything that makes me twitchy, I'll sic my ninja on you."

"Grr," said Yori.

He grumbled and descended the metal stairs, leading Kim and Yori into the sightless depths. When he reached the fifth step, the lights of the lair triggered, flooding the underground chamber. Startled, Kim took in their surroundings all at once, her fists clenching in anticipation.

The lair was little more than a dome hollowed out of the ground. Compared with the sprawling complexes she had visited and vanquished in her career, this lair was downright puny. She could scarcely imagine her parents' house fitting under the dome's apex, which featured a large array of buzzing lights. What struck her most of all, though, was the lair's emptiness.

It evidently struck Drakken as well. "My lair!" he shrieked, clutching his hair. "My equipment! My brilliance! My stuff!"

Broken wires were strewn about on the smooth, dusty floor where large pieces of equipment had been ripped from their housings. Kim could still see the empty bolts and blank spaces in the floor where, presumably, Drakken's cloning equipment had been. Ghosts of footprints sat in the dust, stirring into obscurity when the unlikely trio stepped from the stairs.

Drakken ran from one wire bunch to the next. He grasped at their ends as if he expected to find the equipment hidden at their fraying ends. "This is horrible. They got everything. Even my Gene-A-Ma-Jig. Awwww…"

He began patting the wall in search of something unseen. Kim watched him for a moment before her attention drifted across the vacant spaces where his technology had been. A sliver of despair stung her waning hope. This was their best lead, which Kim only now realized was incredibly thin, and now it had failed.

She had no idea where to go from here. She had no Wade to call, and no Ron on which to lean.

The empty lair swallowed Kim in loneliness.

"Ahah!" crowed Drakken, breaking Kim's reverie. His hand depressed a small square of the wall, triggering a wide section of the dome's side to slide away. The smooth stone rumbled aside to reveal a second chamber, smaller and darker than the one in which they stood. "Whoever the thieves were, they missed the storage room. Perhaps I left something behind to replace this 'correctional fashion' that the state so maliciously provided," he mused, tugging at the baggy chest of his orange jumpsuit.

He darted into the revealed room with Yori following close. Kim trailed after them, slowed down by the weight of her realization. Both Kim and Yori had to look away as Drakken climbed out of his jumpsuit to don a set of clothes he'd dusted off from a pile. There were things, otherworldly and terrible, that need to remain firmly in the deepest recesses of the imagination.

They looked instead to a table filled with various gadgetry, presumably Drakken's designs. "If Drakken has lost his equipment, then perhaps he is of no further use to us," Yori said. She picked up one of the gadgets. It was a small stack of colorful rings on a central stalk, and reminded Kim of a toy her parents had gotten for her brothers when they were much younger.

Kim folded her arms and kept the blue of Drakken's skin in her peripheral vision. "If that's the case, we can hightail it before whoever planted that signal box shows up. Maybe just let them deal with him," she muttered.

"Or, we could return him to where he—," Yori began.

The stack of rings in Yori's hands flashed with white light. Kim had to avert her eyes until the pink glow outside her eyelids faded. When she could look again, she nearly burst out laughing.

Yori, who had topped Kim by more than an inch, now stood less than three feet tall. She looked to be no more than four years old, and her clothes had shrank to match. Adult Yori was beautiful and elegant, but as a child, Yori possessed a pudgy adorability that gave Kim a smile she desperately needed.

"—belongs," Yori finished in a youthful squeak. She looked down at herself, horrified by what the device had done to her body.

Across the room, Drakken finished buttoning his cobalt lab coat. A pair of round black cylinders in the room's corner occupied his attention. "Stop playing with my Juvenator," he shot back distractedly.

Yori's hands pulled at the rings of the device, shaking with rage. "If this change is permanent, I will end him slowly," the again-young ninja growled.

Kim stilled Yori's struggle with a hand on the Juvenator. "Ease up before this thing turns you into a fetus," she said.

Half a decade of foiling Drakken gave Kim a unique familiarity with his style of design. It was a simple matter for Kim to twist the rings back and trigger the device with a tap to its stack. She was tempted—just for a second—to leave the would-be competitor for Ron's affections stuck somewhere at a pre-curves age. With another blinding flash, Yori returned to her old self, breasts, hips, scowl and all.

While Yori patted herself down to gauge her proportions, Kim glanced back at Drakken and found her own reason to scowl. He was engrossed with the large cylinders, whose glossy surfaces reflected a warped enthusiasm in his face. "Hey! Don't get grabby over there, Drakken. If we see anything even remotely ray-like, you'll have a new boot print on both your cheeks."

He waved off her brusque tone as though it were a nattering fly. "Yes, yes. I'm just checking up on one of my old projects. Actually, I think you might find this one to be particularly interesting."

Kim marched at him between tables of his archived inventions. Her fists swung at her sides, eager to reaffirm the pecking order. "I told you not to mess with—"

It was too late. Smoke roiled from seams that split each cylinder down the middle. The white haze billowed from doors that opened the glossy chambers fully. Kim ran up, only to flinch back from the haze. She squinted through wet smoke, coughing, and then gasped when she saw a face emerge from the smoke that made her heart skip.

Staring at the smiling, freckled visage in the smoke, Kim stammered, "Ron?"

* * *

The inflatable raft ran aground on jagged marble detritus. Pieces of the island's grand architecture lined the shore, scorched at their broken edges, moody and pale under the pall of moonlight. Only the rush of the tide spoke to the three travelers as they dragged their raft up and over the rough shore. It told them nothing they didn't already know.

Monique shivered, though not only because of the cold surf seeping into her shoes. Her last visit to this island had been a rousing adventure. Now it felt as though she encroached upon the threshold of a tomb. "This place is heebie-jeebie central," she murmured.

"You'll have to pick just one," Ron said from the front of the raft. He assumed the brunt of dragging duties, letting Wade climb the marble detritus higher on shore. "We're here to see what Dementor is cooking up in this old heap of his. We don't have time for heebies _and_ jeebies."

Wade scrambled up a chunk of what once had been part of Dementor's central tower. When he reached the apex of the wet, craggy stone, he pulled from his pocket a pair of cell phones he'd kit bashed together. The one screen left between them lit with a spray of binary code, which he read at inhuman speed. "This is so weird," he murmured.

Fiddling with the raft's valve, Ron called up at him, "What's weird? 'Weird' has been a really subjective word lately."

"We saw some lights when we flew over, right? Well, my sensor isn't picking up any kind of power readings. Just some elevated heat against the background a few hundred yards from here. It could just be wild animals," he said.

As soon as he finished speaking, he twitched in surprise at an object sailing over his head, appearing from over the top of the ridge above the shore. The object tumbled end over end on its arc into their midst. It caught the moonlight long enough for the teens to identify it as a bottle. Then it smashed on a rock, spilling shards into the surf.

They stared in shock at the glass bits clinging to the rock. A whining cry shook them loose from wonder: "Hey, that was mine!"

The sound of approaching footsteps dropped down from over the ridge. Ron's heartbeat ramped into panicked overdrive. He yanked the raft out from under Monique, surprising her into the surf, and hissed, "Hide! Hide!"

Wade shimmied down the stone. He and Monique crawled beneath a marble outcropping, half-drowned in the surf. Ron found his own tight hiding spot. But when he tried to drag the raft in, its rubber girth refused to follow him into the crevasse. If he didn't hide it from the owner of those imminent footsteps, the stealth portion of their mission would be over, and the fighting for their lives portion would start well ahead of schedule.

With no choice left, Ron sighed, and gripped the rubber of the raft. Scarlet flashed in his eyes as he tore the raft down the middle, releasing its air with one loud clap that was lost in the crash of the waves. He dragged the deflated corpse of the raft down by his feet and wedged himself in the crevasse, and waited.

Loose stone rattled down from the top of the ridge. The silhouette of a man dropped soon after, falling into the surf mere feet from where Ron hid. He controlled his surprised breath, turning his presence into a specter that would make Yamanouchi proud, and watched the silhouette stagger to the glass bits on the rock. Light fell into the silhouette's face, revealing his identity. Ron had to fight doubly hard to remain silent.

"You guys are jerks!" Frugal Lucre hollered back up the ridge. He wore a week's worth of wispy stubble on his chin. His hair and clothes were in shambles. Ron could smell him over the salty brine of the sea, which itself may have been the most impressive accomplishment Lucre could claim. His mix of cheap alcohol and body odor made Ron's eyes water while Lucre pawed drunkenly at the rock.

"That was my last bottle," the dumpy villain moaned. "Why do all those guys have to treat me like that? Maybe I don't have cool villain gimmicks like them, but still… 'S rude, is what it is…"

Struggling through a sherry haze, Lucre climbed back up the slope. His shoe scraped the rock right next to Ron's frozen face. It was several minutes more, once Lucre's footfalls had faded into the background, that Ron emerged from hiding.

Monique and Wade rose up from the low outcropping as drowned rats. She wrung the bottom of her shirt to no avail, and groused, "I used to like swimming. Moonlit beaches used to sound romantic. What happened to my life?"

"Did you hear him?" Wade asked drippingly. "It sounds like there are other villains up there. Dementor might be trying to rebuild the original Legion. Why else invite Lucre?" he added with a frown.

Lucre had looked more a hobo than an invitee to Ron. But from the sound of it, there was definitely more than one villain to content with. It didn't matter why they were here. He needed to get through them to get to Dementor, so he would. But that didn't mean he had to fight them. Maybe he could even use them.

"What did you do to the raft?" Monique cried, spying the sheaf of torn rubber in Ron's hiding spot. She twisted her sodden hair to empty it of water. "How are we supposed to get back to the seaplane? We can't exactly whistle for it to come, Ron."

Half his mind was lost in thought of the unknown quantity of villains waiting for them over the ridge. The other half possessed his unique belief in his ability to overcome the consequences of his snap decisions. "We'll drown that bridge when we get to it, Mon. Right now, we need to head topside and figure out what's what," he said.

Wade held his cobbled sensor at arm's length. It dribbled seawater, having shorted out when he had hid. Dropping the useless device, he asked, "You gonna go ninja?"

"I could, but I'm not keen on the idea of leaving you two here alone. Plus, I have no idea what the surveillance around here is like anymore. Sneaking could go sour real fast." An uncomfortable amount of ninja stealth relied on preparation, an area in which Ron knew he did not excel. Intuition and talent, he had in droves. But he could still accidentally wander onto a sensor, or a trap, and effectively kill them and their chances of saving Kim.

Monique dug through the raft's remains, hoping to salvage something. She came back with the emergency kit. Checking its contents, she said, "Well, at least we have this."

Ron's attention fell into the box. He reached over Monique's shoulder and pulled out a large tube marked "Nutra-Paste." It was a survival food substitute he had eaten before, and could do without ever eating again. He squeezed out a line of the paste on his finger and stared at it thoughtfully. The blend of vitamins, carbs, proteins, and sweetener glistened like sapphire. It tasted like sapphire, too.

"Hey, Wade. Remind me. You're a super-genius who can make anything out of nothing, right?" he asked.

"I'm not going to dignify that with a response, except to say that yes, yes I am," Wade said. "Why? What do you want me to make?"

A glance at the orange rubber at his feet gave him a smile and an idea. He smeared the blue paste over his nose, and said, "A couple of bad guys."

* * *

The man that emerged from the mist of the cylinder was Ron Stoppable in every way the eye could discern. Shaggy blond hair fell into his chocolate eyes, which twinkled with child-like delight that time could never smother. A long-sleeved black shirt and dark cargo pants hung from his deceptively strong body. He stood with a slight slouch and a bedazzling grin that fooled Kim for almost a tenth of a second.

"What the hell is this?" she said snidely of the duplicate Ron.

"Kim-san, look!"

Yori's shout made Kim look to the other opening cylinder. She became confused, and wondered why Drakken would put a mirror in the cylinder. When the mist cleared, and she saw her smirking "reflection" wearing her classic mission clothes, she understood.

"Hi!" her duplicate chirped as she stepped from the cylinder. "I'm Kim Possible, and I love to meddle in the affairs of my intellectual superiors."

The duplicate Ron pumped his fist, and cried, "Booyah!"

Kim grasped the collar of Drakken's lab coat. She dragged Drakken between the duplicate pair, fully into the fury burning from her eyes, and snapped, "You cloned me? Again? You son of a bitch!"

She cocked her fist back, ready to turn his nose inside out, when he raised his hands in frantic surrender. "No! Wait! They aren't true clones. They're just syntho-drones, I swear. I thought they could help!"

Grabbing his lapels, Kim slammed him back against a lab table. His faux-Possible stood by with an empty grin on her face. Beakers smashed with the force of the blow as she shouted, "Is that supposed to be a joke? Ha-ha, I syntho-droned you and your BF? Do you have any idea how sick I am of seeing someone else with my face right now?"

"You don't understaghhttthh—"

Drakken's eyes bulged as Kim's thumbs sank into his throat. Desperate pleas gargled behind his lolling tongue. He thrashed on the table, knocking its glass vessels to the floor, where they smashed and spilled stinking chemicals that pooled on the stone. His tiny hands wrung Kim's wrists to no avail. Her grip was iron. Her eyes burned with unleashed hate she had been stifling for half a decade, hate that the injuries of late had multiplied a thousand fold.

Yori chopped Kim's grasp away from Drakken's throat with a deft stroke of her hand. As Drakken collapsed, wheezing, Kim whirled upon the ninja. Her fist struck even before her hateful glare reached Yori, who staggered with the blow.

Seeing Yori rocked by her fist broke Kim's rage. She blinked her bloodshot eyes and forced open her hand. Her gaze trailed to Drakken, whose purple face faded back to a healthier blue. "Yori…" Kim murmured, "I…I didn't…"

Yori righted herself slowly. Blood trickled from her lip. Her expression chilled the waning fire in Kim's chest. There was no question that Kim's next outburst would be met in kind. "Have you regained your senses?" she whispered coolly.

"…yeah. Yeah, I'm okay now." Kim braced herself back against the table and felt far from okay. As her adrenaline wore off, she felt the world try to tilt itself to either side, throwing her balance for a loop. Fatigue ate her legs, leaving her with nothing but rubber on which to stand.

Turning her icy words upon Drakken, Yori continued, "I suggest we calmly interrogate Doctor Drakken, and wait for his reason behind these cheap facsimiles before we decide to kill him."

Drakken straightened his collar with a raspy whimper. "Just once, I'd like to team up with a girl who can't beat me up," he grumbled. Both girls' expressions darkened with impatience. "That is," he stammered, "Cheerleader and Buffoon are from a previous scheme of mine."

"Cheerleader and Buffoon?" Kim repeated archly.

"Yes. You can probably guess which one is which," Drakken said, smoothing his jacket. He stepped between the two syntho-drones and slung his arms around them. All three grinned eerily. "I had planned to unleash them upon you back when I first developed syntho-technology. Of course, I didn't have your brainwave scan at the time, so I had to approximate their personalities."

Cheerleader giggled and grinned. "Saving the world from that handsome Doctor Drakken is awesome! So not the big!"

"Booyah!" Buffoon yelled, throwing his fists in the air as he grinned Ron's grin.

"One of my early syntho-drone triumphs. And such a cutie-pie, don't you think?" asked Drakken.

Kim suppressed a gag as Drakken ran a hand through Cheerleader's long, luxurious red hair. "I think I'm going to be sick if that thing turns out to be anatomically correct," she said. "But before I puke, I need to beat the crap out of you, because I'm not hearing anything close to a good reason for you booting up these creepy copies of me and Ron!"

He clucked his tongue and shook his head. "How did you ever manage to outsmart me? You've attracted the attention of someone who could offer honest, loyal Shego enough of a paycheck to turn on her dear Doctor Drakken. Not to mention the Global Justice goons whose jet you've evidently grand-theft-aero'ed. We're going to need more help if we're to find the fool who's foolish enough to fool around with my equipment for his foolery!"

Kim and Yori exchanged incredulous looks. "We? You're a little confused. Your part in this is over. Lead's a dud," Kim said. "Why shouldn't we just leave you and your goo dolls here for mystery bugger to come and find?"

Drakken's trademark smugness resurfaced on his features, as though the villain in him had truly awakened. He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace, his head tilted back in mocking thought. "Oh, I suppose you could. But then I'd be left to track my equipment all by my lonesome, and you would miss out on meeting whoever photocopied your sidekick's face."

"Track?" echoed Yori.

"I'm a mad scientist, little girl," Drakken said, agitated. "I spend my life creating devices of unimaginable potential that my so-called peers would trade their own mothers to possess. Over the years, I've learned to put tracking bugs in all my important equipment so I can find it when one of my lesser steals it."

Snorting, Kim said, "You learned that trick after you stole Dementor's Detonatrix Engine and he showed up to get it back. After I diffused it."

Puffing, Drakken snapped, "Look, the point is, I learned it, and my cloning equipment has chips I can track remotely, and I have my own meddlesome teenagers to help me—"

"Booyah!" Buffoon crowed.

"—and my own hover car to track it in. So who needs you?" Drakken brayed in Kim's face.

Kim paused, frowning in thought as Drakken deflated with a series of huffing breaths. She glanced at her doppelgangers, who smiled emptily back at her. Her gaze drifted to the other end of the lab, where a half-painted oval hover car sat on a repair rack. "Just how convincing are these drones of yours?" she asked Drakken.

"They're perfect," he said, miffed.

Cheerleader tilted her head. "Have you seen any boys? I love to love boys! But which one should I love to love the most?" she asked, clearly vexed by the idle thought.

Cringing, Kim muttered, "That's a little more convincing than I'd care to admit. It'll do."

"Do for what?" Drakken demanded.

Activating her Kimmunicator, Kim turned from him, and put forth a call. "Hana? Rufus? Come in."

A light screen appeared above Kim's wrist. Hana's troubled face resolved from the static, with Rufus perched on the girl's shoulder. She put on a brave face as she said, "_We stayed in the jet, just like you said._"

"Good girl," Kim said. "Now, I need you two to come to my location. There's not much time, so hurry, but be careful. Rufus, you should be able to follow our trail, no problem. And leave the jet unlocked," she told the saluting mole rat.

"_Why?_" Hana asked.

"I'll explain when you get here. Now move quick." Kim closed the link, and then turned to the two syntho-drones. Far from shuddering, she now looked upon them with a favorable smile. "Cheerleader? Buffoon?" she asked.

"Booyah?"

"I want you two to go topside and take a walk. We've got some friends coming in a few hours. Be sure to give them a warm welcome," Kim told them. Her smile drew deviously upon the drones.

Cheerleader and Buffoon skipped merrily from the lab while their creator stewed in their wake. He whirled upon Kim, who had moved on to inspecting his hover car. "Where do you get off ordering my drones around, you little miscreant? Those are my drones!"

Kim kicked the gravity skirt of the car, and nodded in approval. "And whoever comes looking for you is going to love them. And when GJ finally tracks the hover jet we leave parked in the open with its very own set of Team Possible, and finds whoever stole your stuff on the island looking for you, everybody involved in that snafu is going to thank you. Now shut up and grab whatever you need, and get in the car. We're going cruising for cloners with the top down."

Redness crept up Drakken's neck as he watched Kim climb into the pilot seat of his car. When Yori prodded him from behind, he reluctantly complied. "It's so comforting to know that some meddlesome things in life will never change," he snarled snidely.

* * *

"This so isn't going to work," Monique muttered. She trailed behind Ron, dreading every step that brought them deeper into the island.

Not far from the beach, an overturned robot chassis played host to an enormous bonfire. The metallic monstrosity was long past its murderous days, but it did warm a small collection of silhouettes that sat in a ring around it. There were other, smaller fires littered around the local ruins, with more silhouettes populating the spaces between.

Monique doubted that the gaggle of indiscernible villains would be less frightening by day, but she wished for daylight all the same. The shadows around them made her insides jump, while her clammy, cold outsides remained locked with fear. "Why doesn't Wade have to do this?" she hissed.

Ron glanced back, making his helmet of rubber cloth flop into his eyes. "Because he's gonna sneak into Dwarfenstein's old command center and maybe find a computer to hack," he hissed back.

"So why do we have to do this?"

He turned back, making his rubber cape flair. "Because these bozos might know something about Dementor that we don't. They're on his island. They have to be part of his plan."

She sighed and tugged at the seaweed collected around her shoulders and draped over her hair. The smelly plant matter clung to her bare skin all over, making her want to wretch for its odor and touch. "Fine. So why did I have to strip down to my skivvies and put on this soggy salad? I feel like the ocean barfed on me."

Tilting his cap forward, Ron marched for the fire, and whispered back, "You're a super villain. Act like it."

Monique shook her fist and jogged after him. Her bare feet slapped against the cracked stone walkways of the ruins. "Oh, I'll act like it. I'll act like it all up and down that tight little behind of yours, you raft-wearing, goofy little—"

Their approach attracted the attention of the denizens of the fire. Most of them just looked up as Ron and Monique came within sight before staring back into the flames. One of them blithely ignored the pair. His interest lay in waving his hands through the edge of the flame with giggling glee. But another among them rose to confront the pair, and blocked the firelight with height and build both enough to dwarf them.

"Dude, I do not recognize you. Or you," said the man, who eyed Ron and Monique hard enough to stop the pair in their tracks. He was made from pure muscle contained inside a ratty tank top and holey jeans, and possessed a crown of golden hair that was business in the front and party in the rear. When he spoke, his voice rolled like wet gravel. "Who are you? Seriously?" demanded Motor Ed.

Ron used all of his willpower not to touch the blue paste smeared over his features. Instead, he straightened the "Z" pinned to his shirt and affected an imperious tone that gave even him chills.

"Who am I? Who am I? You dare to question who I am, knowing full well that I could end your pathetic excuse for a life with but a wiggle of my finger?" Ron howled, and thrust his pinky into Ed's face.

Ed crossed his eyes at the pinky. Confusion reigned between his bushy eyebrows. "Um, yeah?"

"Tremble, fool! For you stand in the presence of the greatest criminal mastermind the world has ever feared. In New Delhi, they cry my name in the dead of night as a curse to the heavens themselves. I am the Blue Scourge of Europe, the Sapphire Dingo of the Outback, and the accursed parking ticket upon the windshield of liberty everywhere! I! AM! ZORPOX!" Ron bellowed, thrusting his hands into the air.

The name echoed through the camp, turning heads everywhere as Ron spread his rubber cape. Monique wilted under the attention, and withdrew into her seaweed coat. Ron didn't share her pessimism, and panted in the afterglow of his performance. He was sure this would work.

Ed scratched his head. "Dude, your costume is made of rubber. It looks like you made it out of traffic cones. Or a raft, or something."

Face ticking, Ron took a step back and began to think of exit strategies. "Yes, well…I…"

A shrug lifted Ed's mountainous shoulders. "Hey, it's cool. Seriously. I mean, that's why we're all here, right? Times are tough." His expression descended with thoughts abound that churned Monique's guts as he looked at her. "And who is this fine, fine chick?"

"Oh. This is my current number two, the dreaded Kelp Siren," Ron said hurriedly.

She waggled her fingers in greeting. "Hi. I'm new," she said. "But evil."

"Righteous. Name's Motor Ed. C'mon, I'll introduce you around," Ed said.

He led them to the bonfire, where the rest of the silhouettes transformed into men and women in varying states of dilapidation. Their clothes were threadbare, their hair, unkempt and unshaven. Most of the faces were unknown to Ron, but he did recognize a few, and was surprised to see them so, much less at all.

Ed plopped down on the broken claw of the kill-bot housing their fire. "Most of these guys are just henchmen whose jobs went belly-up when things got tough. But we got a few big names around here, like you and me. Over there, that's Adrena Lynne."

The high-flying villain Ron had known now sat hunched on a rock, wrapped around a blank bottle. She appeared weeks out from any kind of bathing, and stared forlornly into the fire. When she looked up at Ron, he nearly lost the villainous sneer masking his horror.

"Course, not everybody's so bummed. Just look at Pyro Pete. He's been like that ever since he got here," Ed said.

His nod directed the teens to the man waving his hands through the flames. The scrawny, wiry man had no hair and no eyebrows, just skin that glistened raw with burn scars of all different ages. His eyes bugged as he gazed upon the flames, and cooed, "Through the fire, we see. The fire guides us, cleanses us, and comforts us. It removes pain and fear with its lesson, a lesson of love…"

Monique cringed. "He seems…jolly," she drawled.

Pete jerked at the sound of her voice. He thrust himself between her and the fire, and shrieked, "She's not for you! Her love is mine! She sings to me alone, in the voice of a thousand angels that snap and crackle from the throne of God with the wisdom of Athena!"

"Yes. She is the wisest and crackliest one there is," Ron agreed uneasily.

Digging through his pockets, Ed produced a book of matches, which he tossed to Pete. The smoldering man snatched up the book with a gleeful squeal. "Nah, s'okay, Pete," Ed said. "The new guys don't want your fire. C'mon, let's leave Pete 'n' his lady alone."

They followed Ed from the fire, which crackled with Pete's attention. Ron found it hard to turn from the despondent Adrena Lynne. Even after all the trouble she had given them, it ate at him to see anyone in such a state. "So, um, Ed," he said villainously. "Just what kind of operation do you have here? What's your scheme to conquer the world?"

"Take over the world?" Ed barked with laughter. He slapped Ron on the shoulders, nearly knocking the teen over. "You're a funny dude, Z-Man. Seriously."

As they moved further into the camp, Monique's terror unclenched with sympathy. "None of these people look very fearsome," she said softly. There were broken men surrounded by broken bottles everywhere she looked. Every step Ed led them through the ruins disproved Ron's assumptions more and more.

Gesturing around, Ed explained, "We're just sort of here hiding from Jonny Law. Once you bust out of jail, there's only so much you can do. None of us have secret labs or trust funds. Seriously. So we found this old spot. It used to belong to some guy named 'Dementoid,' or something."

"Is he here?" Ron asked eagerly. Then he cleared his throat, and remembered his disguise. "I mean, Zorpox would very much like to meet such a man of vision…so that I may crush him! Or…join him!"

Ed chuckled. "Sh'yeah. But no, Dementoid don't live here no more, dude. That's why we're squatting in his old digs. Seriously. It's cool, though. He had a lot of emergency junk we've been digging out of these buildings. You get used to the taste of freeze-dried asparagus pretty quick. Put it between a couple of crackers, and you got yourself a burger, dude."

Ron hid his disappointment behind his mask of paste. Their only lead had been a waste of time, leading them to some bizarre kind of bad guy shanty town. Failure permeated this place, and now steeped Ron in its stench. He turned his sigh into a weak cackle.

As they neared the opposite edge of the camp, Ed brightened. "Oh, dude, I have got to show you someone. Seriously, you are going to, like, flip. These guys are way heavy hitters, like you, right? Yaahhhhh!"

He strummed his air guitar as he led them to the last fire, set in a circle of stones in the shadow of Dementor's old sanctum. The debris was largest here near the center of the island. Buildings lay in great piles and scattered into jagged boulders that glowed gold in the firelight.

Two silhouettes sat around the last fire. As Ron approached, he felt his presence break the solitude of the pair. There was good reason for these two to be by themselves. He could sense it in the way they sat: proud and tall, perched on their seats instead of slumped like the others. Like everyone else in the camp, Ron quickly understood that this pair was not to be trifled with.

One of the pair stood with the help of a cane at Ed's approach. A shotgun clacked in his grip, ejecting the casing of a shell that convinced Ed to stop his tour group right where it was. His back to the fire, the figure was hardly discernable. His face was a mass of red, dirty beard that ended at his glistening scalp. One strong, stubby leg stomped from a tattered kilt as he demanded, "Ach, what do ye want, motor mouth? I told ye, we dinnae need anything from th' likes of ye."

Horror blossomed in Monique's face, which she curtained with seaweed. Ron felt his stomach drop as Ed said, "Easy, Killigan-dude. I just wanted you to meet some new dudes. Seriously. These are a couple of real big bads, like us. Meet Zorpox and Kelp Siren."

Ed's shove put Ron face to face with Duff Killigan, the world's deadliest one-legged golfer. Up close, the Scotsman looked and smelled even worse. Crusty bandages had been wrapped around the stump peeking from the bottom of his kilt. His shotgun was tucked in the crook of his arm, and rusted so badly that Ron doubted it could even fire, though he had no intention of testing that theory.

Ron smiled uneasily under Killigan's stink eye. The golfer hobbled toward him and stood on one tiptoe, pushing up on his cane to glare right in Ron's face. The paste slathered on Ron's freckles dampened with sweat, and began running at his brow.

"Wha' happened to your face?" Killigan gruffed.

"D'uhm… What happened to yours?" Ron retorted.

Killigan rubbed his beard, which split for a faint smirk. "Aye, a fair question. But ye first, laddie. I've only ever seen one other blue boy, an' I wasn't too fond o' him. What turned you blue? An.'…lumpy?" His scrutiny narrowed on Ron's pasted face. "Good God, you're ugly."

"I, uh, was burned. By flames. Heroic, do-gooder flames," Ron said.

Both Killigan and Ed frowned, confused. "Aren't burns red? Seriously, like, Pete back there has more burns than a person who has, I don't know, a lot of burns. He's all red."

Ron's eye twitched with his running thoughts, which were winded to begin with. "They were, uh, really, really hot flames. And since cooler flames burn red, and hot flames burn blue, these super-hot flames left blue burns. Science." He grinned wide, and then remembered his new self, and tried to scowl menacingly.

Glaring hard at the would-be villain, Killigan drew closer still. His scotch-soaked breath rolled from between twisting lips. Then, abruptly, he lowered himself and shrugged. "If you say so, lad. But what about your naked lass here?"

The question interrupted Monique's sigh of relief. She drew upright, rattling the seaweed draped over her body. Her lip trembled under the attention. Loudly, she blurted, "I control oceanic plant life with my mind!"

"Seriously?" Ed said, clearly more impressed than Killigan. "Cool. Can you show us?"

Rolling with her lie, Monique's voice rose. "Do you see any ocean plants around here?" she said.

"Um, no?"

"Then I can't show you. Besides," she snapped, and wrapped her kelpy arms around Ron, draping him in dripping seaweed. "I'm not your trained poodle. I belong to Zorpon," she said feistily.

"Zorpox," Ron hissed.

"Zorpox," Monique purred quickly, and nibbled at his ear. Both teens tried to hide their shudders of disquiet.

Killigan didn't bother to hide his shudder, nor Ed, his disappointment. The Scotsman stepped back toward the fire, waving with his free hand as he plunked down onto his marble seat. "Alright, alright. Ye lads and lass be welcome t' join us. Villains together, eh?"

A bottled sigh wafted out Ron's nose. This whole mission had proven to be a bust, but he took small comfort in this small favor of fate. If nothing else, this pathetic collection of has-beens wouldn't attack them. He was in the clear.

Elbowing the other man at the fire, Killigan said, "Hey, Monty. Pull yourself together long enough to say hello at least, ye hairy ape."

Ron's sigh was sucked back in with a sharp gasp as Lord Montgomery Fiske turned from the fire to look upon Ron with wild eyes. Days' worth of beard clung to his face. The man wore tattered black robes that left his hands and feet bare. The sight of his toes made Ron ill: they had been cut again and again between, as if Fiske were trying to make them opposable again without nothing but a knife.

Fiske's wide eyes bugged at the sight of Ron. "The magic! I smell it! I feel it! Give it back to me!" he screamed.

* * *

"You failed?" Dementor roared.

The cry echoed throughout his cavernous lab. He stood upon the raised control platform of his Entropy Cannon and glared down at Shego and Possible. Grease clung to his lab coat, and tools hung from his belt, both evidence of the work he had been putting into the open panel of the Cannon. His eyes burned furiously upon the pair, cowing Possible, but angering Shego.

The mercenary drew herself up. Even with his platform, he stood eye to eye with her. "Look, it's not like I enjoy screwing the pooch any more than you do. There were complications. The princess was already there. It was a million-to-one chance. Bad luck."

Dementor shook with rage. "Excuses! You dare bring me excuses? And you, boy! Where were you when Drakken escaped with the one person who might actually be able to stop us?" he demanded of Possible.

"I…I defeated her, Father," Possible said. His chest swelled with the memory. He said it again, louder. I defeated her. I earned my name, just like you said. I am Possible now."

He expected his father to rejoice, as he had. But instead he saw his father's face darken. Dementor lashed out, cracking his hand across Possible's face. "You earned nothing, you miserable little failure! Drakken was the mission! Drakken escaped. Er hat mit Possible entwischt! And you believe you won something?"

Shego shoved Possible out of the way. Then she floored him by saying, "Leave the kid alone. I already told you, it was bad luck that the princess and her ninja gal pal were already there. Besides, why do we need Doctor D anyway? It's not like he's much—"

If Shego's defense of him floored Possible, then his father absolutely astonished him. Dementor backhanded Shego, slapping her mouth shut. The crack of his glove echoed through the lab.

She froze, shocked. Her hand rose to her red cheek as if to test its sting. When she pulled it away, the hand burst with a blaze that cast her twisting features in furious green light. Her other hand lit to match. "You have five seconds to convince me not to roast you alive, little man," she growled.

Dementor sneered, and did so with six terse words: "No one else will have you."

"How dare you?" she fumed.

He held up his fingers, silencing her. "You spent your entire career pandering to a blue fool who betrayed and discarded you. You haven't a single victory to your name. Your teenage nemesis trounces you at every turn. You are damaged goods, Shego. Bargain bin discount villainy. No one else will hire you. No one else will do business with you. So shut your cow mouth and never again question me. Do you understand?"

Shego's flaming hands trembled. Her jaw clenched to hide the quiver of her lip. Eyes glistening and narrowed, she extinguished her hands and marched out of the lab without a word.

Satisfied, Dementor turned back to his Cannon, and then heard Possible say, "But Father, why do we need this Doctor Drakken?" He turned with a furious expression seeping from his helmet. The boy raised his hands and took a step back, saying, "Please, Father. I only wish to understand. Why do we need him? Isn't your brilliance enough?"

Dementor's expression softened. He bent and retrieved a brown satchel from the platform floor. "You recall your mission to Middleton and the item you liberated from Global Justice?"

How could he forget? "Of course, Father."

Opening the satchel, Dementor drew out a small, blue gun. It was unlike any weapon the boy knew. He remembered it well, and still bore curiosity for its function. "I am attempting to integrate this device into my Entropy Cannon. The problem is, I did not invent this device. Drakken did. And I cannot make sense of his design no matter how I study it. Its circuitry is sheer madness, and yet its function is, sadly, brilliance."

The boy saw the problem at once. "And if you don't understand it, you can't integrate it into the Cannon."

"Yes," Dementor said, nodding. He rubbed his eyes through his mask. "Which is why we need Drakken, or our whole scheme…er, mission, falls apart. And since his absence is, at the moment, slightly worse than his company, I fear I am of an ill temper. Of course I am proud of you for defeating Kim Possible. You have earned your name and more, my son."

Possible's face exploded with joy. "Thank you, Father!" he beamed.

Waving off Possible's affections, Dementor said, "Go, apologize for me to the Lady Shego. She bore the brunt of my frustration unjustly. I wish to ponder this problem alone."

Possible bolted from the lab without delay. He virtually skipped through the halls, slipping past confused henchmen, until he caught up to Shego in the quarters section of the lair.

She stood outside of her door, trying to remember the keypad code through her haze of rage. The approach of his glee made her teeth grind. "Shego! Shego!" he called down the hall. "Father didn't mean it. He was just frustrated. I have a name!"

Her eye twitched above the fading redness in her cheek. Without turning from her door, she growled, "Whoopee for you. Now go the hell away before a name is all you wind up having left."

Her growl curdled his good spirits. Leaning to see her face, he said, "Why can't you be happy about this? Is this because of what Father said? I already told you, he didn't mean it. Father relies on you, just like I do."

Shego stopped. She leaned on the door frame, her head bowed. Possible noticed her shoulders rising and falling heavily beneath her hair. He heard her breath rasp faster and faster. Her gloves sparked, melting divots into the metal frame. Her whole body quivered.

"…Shego?" he asked.

She whirled around and grasped him by the throat, slamming him back against the wall. As he choked, her face filled his vision. Her eyes flared with feral hunger. Her breath rolled hot against his face. When he opened his mouth to gargle a plea, she attacked his lips with hers. Her tongue filled him, teasing him, igniting a spark deep in him he didn't know he had.

Her mouth retreated to smile, and her grasp loosened. "You want a name so bad? I'll give you a name," she hissed. "But you're going to have to earn this one for real."

The keypad unlocked the door as it died beneath a blast of green fire. Shego grasped Possible and threw him hard through the parting doors, driving him backward until he struck the far wall of her room. The lights stayed off, plunging the room into darkness as the doors closed.

Shego raked the clothes off his body. His black shirt fell in shreds, exposing muscled chest to the tantalizing horrors of her touch. Her teeth claimed his neck, marking it, making him gasp. Her tongue swept his smooth chin before diving back into his mouth. She heaved into him, pressing him, pinning him back against the wall.

With his bottom lip in her teeth, she growled, "You'd better start fighting back, or you're gonna get hurt."

His hands acted without him. He grasped the collar of her jumpsuit and tore, breaking the clasps that held it together. His touch explored the supple flesh inside, earning him a gasp from Shego that jolted her whole body. The suit fell from her shoulders, hanging from her arms.

Shego ripped free of her sleeves with a burst of fire. She shoved him as hard as she could, launching him onto the cramped bunk of her quarters. He'd hardly landed before she bounced atop him, pinning him with her legs.

Green and khaki fabric flew from their bodies. Wholly honest, they intertwined, tasting one another with fervent lips. He traced her curves, making her arch and moan. His body knew hers in ways he didn't understand and didn't question. The fire in him told him where to go. Shego's voice rose in ecstasy with each new tease of his tongue.

In moments, Possible grew ready for her. Panting, hungering, Shego rolled atop him. Her features dissolved with animal need as she overcame him. She as a lioness. She was a goddess. Ivory carved in the perfect design, with ebony pouring from her shoulders and swinging with each twist of her hips. She glistened.

She screamed his name.

* * *

"Ha! Magic?" Ron laughed nervously as he backed away a step. "Who has magic? Certainly not me. I. Who is Zorpox. That's just silly," he said.

Fiske crouched onto his knuckles and followed Ron back. His head tilted with an inhuman fixation as he sniffed Ron's scent. The wild shrubbery growing above his eyes exploded upward.

"You are the one!" Fiske whispered hoarsely. "You are the jester who would steal the throne of the true god-king. Hence more to be though the North Star, even though your glow pales in that of His. Renounce the throne to which you hold no sovereignty. Stand aside for the god-king of trees!"

Killigan's hand stopped Ron by the shoulder. Ron readied himself to fight his way out. Then he saw Killigan's smile, and held his fists back. "Ooch, dinnae pay his ramblings no mind, lad. He's been a bit screw loose since his last run-in with Kim Possible." He took Fisk by the arm and limped him back to the fire. "C'mon, Monty, leave the new folk alone."

"Usurper to my throne of stars," whimpered Fiske. He sat back down as Killigan directed, but kept staring at Ron with a mixture of heartbreak and hatred.

The five of them gathered around the circle. Ron made sure to put as much fire as he could between himself and Fiske, whose dark eyes haunted him through the flames.

Ed produced a flask and took a long swig. Wiping his mouth, he passed it to Monique. "So what made you guys come here?" he asked her.

After her own long swig, Monique slipped Ron a glance. She thought it over with another swig, and then passed the flask to Ron, and said, "Our own gig went south when, uh, that redheaded meddler blew up our secret headquarters…or something."

"Yes," Ron sneered, raising the flask to his lips. "That troublesome little—oh my God does this stuff stink!" He yanked the flask away from his wringing face, holding it out as far as he could between two fingers. When the three villains looked at him funnily, he tried to smile, and said, "Er, bottoms up?" Flinching, he plunged the flask mouth into his lips and tilted it back.

"An' just what was your operation?" Killigan asked, giving the young villain a curious look.

Ron pulled himself from the flask with a heave. "Smooth," he rasped, and wiped his mouth. "I, uh, was in the business of world domination. A self-starter. After the, um cheerleader torched my secret lair, I went looking for Professor Dementor. I hear he's the number one name in the world-dom game. But he isn't…he isn't here?"

Killigan shook his head as he accepted the flask. "Nay," he said. "Ol' shorty is long since gone from these parts. Shame, really. He had a real nice lair here, an' he kept it longer 'n anyone else I know. That's pretty rare, what with the lass havin' a thing for blowin' up a man's house."

"So you're sure," Ron asked. "I mean, you checked everywhere? He's small, he can fit in tiny spaces."

Whiskey courage lifted Killigan's voice into a snap. "Aye, damn your eyes! O' course we've looked all around this blasted island for anything we can use. D' you think we like squatting here? Villains o' our caliber? If there was anything t' find here, we'd have found it an' used it. Or drank it," he mused sadly, and emptied the flask.

Ron eased Killigan's rant down with a gesture. "Okay, okay. Relax. We're all on the same evil side here. I just thought…" He turned, and chucked his thumb at the towering ruins behind them, the remnants of Dementor's sanctum. "Like there. I thought maybe Dementor would have left something really cool behind in his clubhouse."

A chortle passed between Killigan and Ed. Even Fiske muttered less, his rocking eased by the amusing notion. "Well, sure," Ed said. "That snacktum place still has tons of goodies, like computers, or gear, and, like, a ton of emergency junk. Seriously."

"Really?" Monique asked, brightening.

Killigan finished their laugh. "Oh, aye. There's still plenty o' bounty in there, 'cause no man is smart enough to figure a way around Dementor's booby traps. Full half of the newcomers to the island wind up trapped in one in there, an' they just starve to death inside."

Ron blanched beneath his paste. "Booby traps?" he echoed.

"Sure, dude. Force fields, laser grids. The works," Ed said.

Muted fear leapt from Ron to Monique and back again. His airy tone warbled as he said, "Now, when you say 'smart enough,' how smart are we talking? Like, would a Mensa lifer be able to get around this stuff, or are we talking full super-genius required?"

Blinding light erupted from the cracks in the sanctum at Ron's back, pouring white luminance over the island with the crackling sound of static. As the light faded, a thrilled whoop worked its way through the camp, beginning with Ed. The brawny squatter hopped to his feet and wailed a solo on his insubstantial guitar. "Dude, talk about timing! Let's go see who we got!"

Ron and Monique found themselves caught in the squatters' pull as they gravitated toward the glowing ruins. The pair's dread drowned in the excitement. Living in the broken remains of another man's accomplishments must have made it easy to imagine someone else's suffering as entertainment when compared with one's own. Schadenfreude was the flavor of choice on the island. Unfortunately for the teens, they knew whose suffering would be the squatters' delight.

The mob squeezed through the gaping doors. Full-fledged villains like Killigan and Fiske—and Ron and Monique—were given preferential position at the front. Lynne, Lucre, Ed, and Pyro Pete were next, followed close by a mob of henchmen. There was nowhere for Ron to go but forward, through the halls he had stormed a month ago, climbing over fallen walls and dead kill-bots. If he looked hard enough, he could probably still find his knuckle-prints in the wall.

Their mob came upon a dazzling hallway. An orb of translucent white hung suspended in the middle of the hall, around which the mob pooled. The orb bobbed softly in place and emitted a faint warmth. Inside, a portly figure lay in the bottom, molded to the shape of the orb in unconsciousness. The sight of the figure almost made Ron blurt his name. Only a timely elbow from Monique cut him off.

Killigan waved his cane until the rabble behind them silenced. He jabbed his finger into the orb, sending white ripples through its surface. "Ach, welcome t' hell, ye clumsy bastard," Killigan chortled to the insensate prisoner. "Good news, boys. This one looks fat enough that he might last a while. He may even try to eat himself, like that other fatty last month."

Frowning, Frugal Lucre leaned in close while the others cheered and laughed. "Hey, does this guy look familiar to anyone else? I swear I've seen him before. Was he one of the kids on Fresh Prince?"

"He's just another fatty," slurred Lynne. She tapped her bottle against the orb, and sang, "Fatty, fatty, fatty, flattie, flatly, falling…" and stumbled to the ground.

Rusty gears squealed beneath Ed's mullet. He frowned at the new arrival, stroking his goatee. Something rang familiar with this teenager trapped inside the orb. It gave him a headache to think so hard, but eventually, his memory made the mental leap to the forefront of his thoughts. "Oh! Dude! Oh! Dude! Oh! Dude!" he cried, dancing from foot to foot.

"Ed, we talked about this. Just ask to be excused, and then go pee," Lucre said.

"No, dude! I know who this is. That's Red's little computer buddy!" Ed said.

Lucre glanced skeptically into the orb. Then he gasped. "Seriously? I think you're right."

Ed grew annoyed. "Uh, yeah. Duh, dude."

"Um, I agree with pre-floor Adrena Lynne," Ron said hurriedly. "He's just a fatty. Let's just leave him to eat himself in peace, shall we?"

But Killigan had donned a pair of spectacles to better see the prisoner. His face lit with delight. "It is! It is the lass's webmaster! Oh-ho-ho! Isn't this a stroke of karma?"

A lighter flicked with fire at a frantic rhythm in Pete's hand. He giggled, and pressed himself to the orb. "Let's bathe him in fire," Pete sang, his leg twitching with excitement.

"No, no-no, no-no-no!" Ron said, ushering Pete and the other villains back a step. "Uh, fire is overkill. Let's just leave Wade to wallow in starvation, and his own feces, until death's sweet touch frees him from the orb. Um, in case death asks, how do you get inside the orb?"

The room was pin-drop quiet. Ron found the focus shifting from the orb to him, and felt his old companion, Panic, calling upon him, as Killigan drawled, "How do ye know his name? Why do ye know his name?"

"I ain't never heard of no Zorpol," Lynne slurred as she tried to extricate herself from the floor.

Ron huffed as loudly as he could. "That's just ridiculous. Ridiculous is what that is. Just ridiculous is that! I hate this nameless not-Wade as much as the rest of you bad guys. Watch!" He stuck his face against the orb, and shouted, "You're fat and bad at sports!" Peeling his face from the orb, he turned back to the villainous mob, and asked, "Pretty evil, am I right?"

A collective gasp hid Monique's groan. Ron's eyes darted across the growing anger among the villains and henchmen. His gaze bounced back to the orb, where he saw blue paste trickling down its side. Touching his cheek, he felt skin where most of his paste mask had been.

Fiske's unfocused gaze drew taught upon Ron. His brows crawled together as his haunted face twisted with apoplectic fury. He lifted his finger, and howled, "STOPPABLE!"

"Oh, crap," Ron muttered. He backed against the orb as the six villains advanced upon him, forming a line to box him in. Behind them, henchmen packed in, carrying bottles as bludgeons, or simply pounding fists into palms.

Ed loomed foremost, cracking his ham-sized fists. "Dude, I can't believe we were tricked by Red's gofer. And in such a lame costume, too. That is just so wrong. Get 'im, Kelp Siren!"

Groaning, Monique stepped behind Ed. She buried her bare foot between his legs, turning his whole body into rigid pain. As the behemoth teetered forward, she vaulted his shoulders, shucking her dripping costume to land next to Ron in her black bra and panties.

"Nice," Ron murmured. To her kick or her clothes—or lack thereof—neither of them was sure.

She glared at him beneath the burning gaze of the mob. "I'm trapped on an island, facing down villains in my underwear. This is pretty much my worst nightmare. Could you please focus?"

"The jester sits in the god-king's throne of stars! He rings his cap with a merry little lark!" Fiske howled, his hands aching to tear out Ron's throat.

Ron felt the tingle inside of him burst into flame. His hands burned bright red as he curled them at the mob. "Oh yeah? Well, I have no idea what that means!"

He sprang off Ed's bowed head and over the line of villains, plunging into the scraggly mob beyond. They were trained henchmen, unafraid of a bizarre glow coming from the former sidekick. But they were tired, despondent, and malnourished, and on their best day, twice their number couldn't have hoped to stop the Chosen One of Yamanouchi. Their ranks broke like waves against his fists, which bowled tens of them into the air at a time.

As his scarlet punches cleared the hall, Ron felt something latch onto his back and wrap around his waist. Fetid air rolled over his shoulder in a snarling voice. "The true king rose up from the grave to take back his kingdom from the cowardly jester!"

Pain stabbed through Ron's neck at the bite of an enraged Fiske. Blood pooled beneath Fiske's curled lips. He twisted his head, tearing the flesh, bringing Ron to his knees with a spray of blood.

Ron reached around and pulled Fisk bodily from his back, breaking the crazed man's grip as he might a toothpick. Eyes ablaze, Ron hurled Fiske into Killigan, who hobbled at the pair with his cane raised as a club. Both villains flew back into the wall and did not stir.

"Who's next?" Ron yowled in an echoing voice. The raw flesh at his neck knit into perfect skin. His hands flared and spread, daring the entire mob at once. "C'mon! One god-king, no waiting! Bring it on! **Bring it on!**"

While Ron fought, Monique pounded on the orb. Her fists made its translucent surface ripple, but nothing more. "Wade! Wade, wake up! I don't know how to get you out of there, but you probably do, so you have to wake up and tell me how to save you!" she screamed.

The chaotic baffle of noise roused Wade. He groaned and rolled over, struggling onto his back inside the tiny orb. His bleary eyes opened, and then bugged. He pressed himself against the sphere in a panic, pounding on its sides to the same effect as Monique. As his mind caught up with his senses, he calmed down. "Trapped. Right. I remember now." He smiled weakly at Monique, and then quirked a brow at Ron's massacre of the pathetic squatters. "The battle's new, though."

"Wade! How do I get you out?" Monique asked, pressing her hands over his with the orb wall between them. "Hurry, and use small words!"

Wade examined his imprisonment for a few seconds. Then he shook his head. His shoulders sagged. "You can't," he said. "This is a null-point energy barrier. You guys have to get out of here without me."

She slammed her palms against the orb. "What? Shut up and think! There has to be a way to get you out of there!" she snapped.

"Of course there is. All you need is an electro-particle accelerator. Do you have one?" he snapped back. "This thing will last until someone deactivates it with a specific energy signature, or until time stops. You can't move it and you can't pop it. Now get out of here!"

"We can stay and figure this out," Monique insisted. "Ron can handle these guys. What's the hurry?"

Inhuman cackling yanked their attention to the fight behind Monique. Far outside of Ron's crashing circle, Pyro Pete stalked the hysterical Monique. His bald eyelids spread wide for a crazed look s he held his lighter to his ear. Smoke curled from his lobe as he murmured, "What's that, my love? Yes, yes, I agree. We should welcome them proper. Baptized in love!"

He stole the bottle from an unconscious henchman and shattered it over his arm, soaking his sleeve in stinking gut-rot. A kiss from his lighter set his arm ablaze. Cackling, Pete lurched at Monique with fire consuming his clothes.

Monique pressed herself back against Wade's orb. Both she and Wade screamed, "Ron!"

Their scream broke Ron's berserker fury. His eyes dimmed and fell back to the orb, where Pete tried to embrace Monique with fire. The gagging henchman in Ron's grasp fell aside as Ron leapt across the mob in a single bound, clearing dozens of henchmen at once. He landed next to Pete, and then relocated the living torch with a glowing kick.

"Hang on, buddy," Ron said. His magic fists hammered the orb, turning its translucence opaque. The orb wouldn't budge, so he hit it again, and again. "We'll have you out in a jiffy."

"Ron, you can't break it," Wade said. "I'm safe in here. Monique isn't."

Ron poured more of himself into his punches. His fists outshone the orb, turning the hallway scarlet with his strength. But the orb refused to break. The red light seeped back into Ron's eyes as his growl began to echo again. "I'm not leaving you!"

Monique's moan made Wade look over Ron. She clung to Ron's back, looking fearfully as the dizzy mob parted for Fiske. The raving, foaming madman returned to the fight with a feral howl of Ron's name, charging at Ron on his knuckles.

"She needs you," Wade said, and pounded on the orb.

Baleful helplessness twisted in Ron's freckles. As he scooped Monique into his arms, he locked eyes with Wade, and vowed, "We're coming back for you."

Wade nodded. "I know."

A red nimbus swallowed Ron and Monique. As he jumped, the ambient energy exploded, blowing back every one and thing, save for Wade's prison. The burst blew Fiske off his hands and feet. He lay on his back, howling at the pair rocketing upward. "Stoppable! Give me back my feet!"

Ron's jump pushed through the crumbling roof with a spray of masonry. They kept soaring, higher, higher, moving across the island while it shrank beneath them. In seconds, they were over open water and still climbing higher without control. Ron hugged Monique to his chest to hide his worried look from her. He felt her cling tighter to him.

Finally, his stomach lurched with the beginning of their fall. Gravity reached up to reclaim them, billowing their hair as the ocean loomed to catch them. Ron's nimbus flared when they struck the water, meting force for force to cancel the impact. The light faded, and Ron and Monique were plunged into icy water miles away from anything.

The island was a mere dot now. Ron treaded water and wondered how long it would take him to swim back to it, or to the sea plane they had left anchored off its coast. The salty brine around them seemed eager to swallow them whole. Monique was having trouble keeping her head aloft, and sputtered every few seconds.

"Whelp. Here we are," Ron muttered, and coughed.

* * *

He laid back with a deep sigh and felt Shego's hair tickle his chest. The bed wasn't big enough for them to lie side by side. Neither of them seemed to mind. "That was…wow," he breathed.

"Glad you liked it," Shego said, only half-sarcastic. She reached into her nightstand and rummaged for a cigarette, which she lit with a snap of her fingers. Smoke curled from her pursed lips as she watched his glistening face ease into a cool, exquisite flavor of relaxation. "It was overdue, I'll say that much. It's been…well, too long."

The smoke drifted past his nostrils. He would treasure that smell forever. "You smoke after sex?" he asked.

"Don't know, I never checked," Shego said. She chuckled at her own joke through a pull on her cigarette. He gave her an odd look, which made her glance up. "Do I sm… Never mind. It's an old joke, way before your time. I guess a lot of stuff is," she mused.

He took the cigarette at her offering. It burned his throat all the way to his lungs, making Shego smirk while he coughed. He quickly gave it back to her, and hacked, "I can't imagine why. That's awful."

Shego hummed thoughtfully as she examined the cigarette. "It's all about memories, kid. After a workout like that, I light one of these, and the smell…" A deep breath made her face into bliss. "Like being back in that Camaro the night after the Homecoming game. That car was so damn small," she said with a soft laugh..

Her daydream broke for a frown, and her face returned to normal. "Don't get all flowers and mush about his, kid. This is what it is. Do you understand?"

"I think so? Yes. Yes, I understand."

He breathed easier as Shego laid her head back on his chest. He would have said anything to get her to relax with him again. Love wasn't the issue here. He just wanted the moment to last as long as it could. It was the first moment he ever had, the only moment, when life wasn't about saving the world from itself. He wanted this moment forever.

"Shego? What was that name you were yelling? I didn't quite understand it."

"Sim," she said. "Believe me, you could've been the best on the planet, and I still wouldn't call you 'Possible' during sex." The very thought made her convulse.

"Sim." He rolled the name around in his mouth. It wasn't like his other name. It was fresh. It was his, and not by birthright. He'd earned it. "What does it mean?" he asked.

Shego did not speak for a long time. In that silence, he felt his nice moment end. "Before your time," she said, and pulled on her stumpy cigarette.

Far across the room, where her belt had been flung, Shego's communicator vox crackled to life. The lovers looked up to hear Dementor's voice emerge from the device. "_Lady Shego? I trust your tantrum is at an end?_"

Shego rolled her eyes. She climbed off of Sim and strutted slowly to her belt, reveling in the eyes that followed the sashay of her hips. Bending, she retrieved the communicator, and blew smoke into its vox. "Yeah. I managed to blow off a little steam. What do you want?"

"_I have need of your redoubtable skills. In the hangar, you will find a hover cargo with a compliment of my henchmen. They will brief you en route. Try to bring all of them back with you._"

The communicator silenced with another crackle. The last of her cigarette ran through Shego's sigh. She stomped the butt out as she moved to her closet. "It never ends," she sighed. "You'd better scram, kid. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

Sim rose from the bed and caught the boxers she kicked at him. It was the only attention she paid him as she finished tugging her jumpsuit into place. "You shredded my shirt," he said, stepping into his clothes.

"Another lesson for you: the walk of shame," Shego said. "Embrace it, and it'll go easier."

"I want to go with you."

Shego stopped at the door. Her gaze hardened at the shirtless boy at her bedside. "Yeah? Well, tough shit. I told you what this was. I don't need some puppy dog nosing after me." Scowling, she slapped the door control, splitting open the exit. "I'm leaving on your dwarfy dad's latest errand. Don't be here when I get back."

The doors rushed shut behind her, protecting her from Sim's glare. He found the nearest thing of hers he could, a small photo of a tree house on her nightstand, and flipped it so hard that its glass cracked. Then he stomped out of her room, vowing never to return.

It wasn't about love. It wasn't! He didn't love Shego. She had given him a taste of a world that he didn't have to save, where he could just be. Why couldn't she understand that? Why did she have to yank it away so callously? He had so little, and now he had less!

No. Now he had a name. He had two names. Just like everyone else. And he would have his world where he could just be, even if he had to take it.

Without fully understanding why, Sim stomped through the halls until he reached his father's lab. His access code ushered him through the door. Inside, he found his father buried inside the innards of the Cannon. His footsteps drew out Dementor's helmet, which looked to him with curiosity.

"My son, what is it that makes you walk so loudly? And where is your shirt? And from what are those scratches?" Dementor asked.

"Father, I want to know the plan," Sim said.

Dementor sat up from the access hatch of the Cannon. The blue gun sat at his side, its wiring exposed. Swinging his legs over the side of the platform, Dementor said, "My son, you aren't yet ready for such weighty matters. Your part in this will come again. You have already done well in acquiring this device. Shego is solving our other problem, which will put us back on schedule."

Sim stomped his bare foot. Standing tall, he loomed over Dementor, despite the platform. "Father, I have done everything you've asked, and more. I have faced my others. I have faced Global Justice."

A lean, piercing gaze lanced from Dementor's helmet. He stroked his beard, and said softly, "And now you face me, eh?"

Jaw jutted, Sim stood his ground. "Father, I simply wish to know what we are doing. You claim I will save the world. Well, shouldn't I know how? Why do I have to keep waiting to know? I'm ready to know. I need to know."

Dementor nodded slowly. "Yes. I believe you are." He stood, brushing his jacket clean, taking the moment to let Sim stew while his thoughts collected. "Possible, do you know how to make two old foes settle their grievances in the blink of an eye?"

The question snuffed Sim's petulant ire. "I… No, Father." He had so few memories, and many of those were just the others' dreams. The subject remained something of a mystery to him. "How?"

"By making them forget all their grievances," Dementor answered.

"Forget? How do we do that?"

Dementor retrieved the gun at his feet. "With this," he said. He patted the casing of his massive Entropy Cannon. "With this. And with this."

The tiny scientist held out his communicator. A small hologram emerged from its screen, creating a luminous sphere above the device. As Sim watched, a shape took form inside the sphere: it was a person, young and portly, trapped inside. It was the boy Sim had saved from Global Justice in Middleton.

* * *

Three intrepid explorers plumbed the darkness with a single lantern, a complicated device, and too much swearing for the four-year-old stumbling between them with her mole rat clutched in her hands.

Hana walked close enough to Kim to practically ride on the hero's heels. The rough terrain hurt her feet, but she refused to be carried. She trusted neither Drakken nor Yori enough to sit on either's shoulders. When she thought to ask Kim, the lantern light made her reconsider. Kim didn't look like Kim anymore, just a haggard ghost that tried to smile when Hana spoke. So the little girl walked into the depths of the earth with a soft whimper that only Rufus could hear.

The lantern hung high in Kim's grasp, swinging its light over the pitted surface of the tunnel. If her Kimmunicator's database was accurate—and knowing its programmer, it was—this mine shaft hadn't seen a human being in almost a century. If Kim were going to hide anything, this abandoned tunnel would be near the top of her list of spots. That alone helped to convince her they were on the right track, despite her many misgivings about their guide.

Their process halted as Drakken stopped again, clutching his foot and uttering a curse that carried through the tunnel. Kim gave him a shove that made him stagger forward, and said, "Quit stalling. This is the fifth time in as many minutes that you're holding us up."

His scathing look was made hollow in the lantern light. "I'm going as fast as I can. This thing isn't backlit, so I can barely read it," he said, and thrust the tracking device at her. "And since you won't let me carry the lantern, I can't see more than two inches in front of me, so I keep stubbing my toe, which really hurts! So I suggest you either get in front, give me the light, or take a chill pill!"

The lantern swung next to his face, giving him a clear view of Kim's scowl, which she pressed at him. "One: there is no way I'm turning my back on you. Two: there is no way your butterfingers are going to break our only source of light. And three: if you say anything else besides 'this way' from now on, I will feed you this light, plant your scanner in the back of your skull, and jab you in the back, so that when you scream like a little girl, you light our way while we follow the signal ourselves. **Got it?**"

Drakken swallowed. "This way," he stammered.

Kim swung the lantern back while Drakken stumbled ahead. "You two okay?" she asked.

Two sets of big brown eyes passed by her navel with a whimper. Kim watched Hana and Rufus pass, and then glanced back at Yori. The ninja hadn't moved. Her stony expression traversed the pitch of the mine to make Kin frown quizzically.

"Kim-san, what has become of you?" Yori said softly.

They heard Drakken curse again, and moved to follow him with the light. Their voices lowered into graveyard whispers. "What do you mean?" Kim asked.

Yori kept pace with Kim, keeping the teen hero in front of her, as she had since leaving Drakken's lair. "You are not yourself. You are so far from yourself that I begin to worry, Kim-san. You have pushed yourself in every sense. I fear it is taking a grim toll upon you."

The lantern handle creaked in Kim's grip. "I'm fine," she said.

"You have kidnapped a man from prison and are forcing him to aid in your quest," Yori said. "Worse, you are threatening his life in front of the child. I understand the necessity of these circumstances, but their allowance is limited. Your judgment is clouded by grief and anger, and so I offer you mine."

Kim turned forward to the blue figure groping through the darkness. Her face twisted. "Drakken deserves way worse than a few threats. Wait and see. He'll try something before this is all over."

"And will you act on these threats of yours?" Yori asked. When Kim didn't answer, Yori said, "You have not eaten nor slept since leaving Middleton. You need to rest, Kim-san."

"I'll rest when I know."

"But—"

Kim's glare froze Yori silent. The lantern did terrible things to Kim's features. Or perhaps it was Kim's features that were mercifully masked, except for the lantern light. Regardless, Yori's blood ran cold at Kim's expression. "When I know," Kim said, ending the discussion.

"Ow! Son of…OH!" Drakken's cry echoed forever, and hastened the girls' steps. They took the light to Drakken, who sat upon a rock outcropping, rubbing his foot. His smile beamed when the light found him. "Look what I found!" he sang.

The tunnel ended with a wall of smooth, glistening metal that even four non-geologists could tell didn't belong in the mine. The metal was banded with vertical struts and possessed a tight seam that ran from the floor to the low ceiling. Dark, angry burn marks marred the surface of the metal, which looked otherwise pristine.

"It's a door," Hana said, running her hands over the metal.

Drakken snorted impatiently. "Well, obviously it's a door, you stupid child."

Hana ignored him. She rapped on the metal softly, placing her ear against its cool surface. "Reinforced stainless steel with titanium supports. I can hear them in the vibrations. It's about two feet thick, but it sounds like there's a central locking system at the seam," she told Kim.

Huffing, Drakken said, "Well obviously it's…that. You stupid child…?"

Kim pushed Drakken out of the way and handed Yori the lantern. Aside from the long, slashing scorch marks, the door offered Kim no clues. She lifted her Kimmunicator and took aim, saying, "Cover your eyes."

"Why?" asked Drakken, the only one of them to keep watching.

The Kimmunicator's cutting laser burned into the door's seam, flooding the tunnel with red light that made Drakken scream and clutch his face. Kim guided the laser up and down the seam through her squint until she heard the door ratchet noisily. It slid apart, retracting into the walls. White light poured over them through the opening.

Kim's eyes watered as she stepped through. As her vision adjusted, she came to know their discovery. Her blood ran cold.

Hana and Yori followed her into the circular chamber, which was far taller than the tunnel, and lit with rows of fluorescent ceiling tiles. A dusty, smooth floor clicked underfoot. This chamber had been cut and polished out of the local rock.

Equipment encircled the room. There were tables filled with beakers, tubes large enough to bottle whole men, computer servers the size of automobiles, and countless other instances of technology that mystified the girls. Drakken recognized each component in the room, and squealed in glee. "My babies!" he cried, and ran to greet them all.

The three girls ignored his reunion. They were transfixed by the far wall, which was filled with printed charts, graphs, and, most damning, pictures: pictures of Kim; pictures of Ron; pictures of Kim and Ron; pictures of them fighting together; pictures of them fighting each other; pictures of them kissing; hugging; laughing; running. Every moment Kim could imagine herself in had been photographed to fill this enormous wall, which loomed before her, summing up her life in a disturbing collage.

"Wait," Drakken cried. He stood in an empty socket in a row of enormous tubes, looking around as though the human-sized beaker had been misplaced. "Clone Tube Three is missing? What happened to good old Threebie?"

"I'm afraid that one was misplaced, Doctor. You can thank Shego for that."

Kim whirled around at the voice's emergence from the tunnel. The sight at the doors made her drop the lantern. It shattered at her feet, forgotten. Cold shock froze her body as she tried to shove a thousand thoughts through her mouth. Only one emerged. "You?"

Standing in the doors, Doctor Director gestured to the space around them. "Hello, Kim," she said evenly. "Welcome to Project Sim Possible."

**End Act II**


	8. The Almost Daring Rescue

**Act III: In which the plot is turned upside-down, multiple twists assail our heroes, the villains triumph, and people die.**

* * *

Global Justice Middleton teemed with activity. The new facility's compliment of agents pounded the pristine metal deck as they ran to make ready. Even while the facility's paint still dried, and some of its systems sat uncompleted—the Deck Four bathrooms, for example, and much to the consternation of everyone assigned to decks Three through Five—the agents hurried in preparation for their first major win.

They had captured Kim Possible.

The GJ-M hangar opened out of a cliff face on Mount Trinity. When the massive door hung open, the entire tri-city area lay sprawled below on a green carpet that stretched to the horizon. The view imparted a heavy sensation, giving the observer false impressions of Greek godhood, or of being a very detail-oriented modeler.

Today, numerous technicians and guards in the hangar didn't watch the view. Nor did they tend to the smattering of other hover jets. Everyone present in the hangar stood at perfect attention for the battered hover jet entering the mountain now.

The jet wobbled into the hangar, piercing the holographic camouflage over the entrance. Two smaller pursuit jets flew after it, flanking the hover jet's wings. All three aircraft set down in a cacophony of VTOL engines and ratcheting struts. As the jets powered down, the agents in the hangar quick-stepped into a line next to the hover jet's lowering ramp.

Cameron Du rode the ramp down. The ramp settled hard onto the deck, as though its mechanism were damaged. The hard landing didn't dull an inch of Du's smile. He snapped a rakish salute to the line of agents before him, and said, "All of you Tactical grunts take notice. An Intelligence boy just went out and did your job for you."

Two agents emerged at the top of the ramp. Kim Possible walked between her escorts, her arms swinging before her in heavy restraints. Both agents appeared nervous as they gently nudged her down the ramp, but she complied without protest. They herded her to the deck, where Du presented her to the line.

"Here she is. The little girl who's caught more super villains than your entire division twice over. The girl who's been doing your jobs for you for close to a decade." Du grinned and flourished at the disgruntlement peering through the cracks in the agents' decorum. Their bitter mortification almost made the last three days of chase worthwhile.

Turning, he rested a hand on Kim's shoulder. She didn't react to his touch except to stagger slightly beneath the force of his grasp. Du smiled mockingly to her as he gestured to the line of agents, and said, "Here they are, Miss Possible. These are the men you betrayed and attacked. They'll be your keepers for the next hundred years, with time off for good behavior. Do you have anything you'd like to say to them?"

She smiled sweetly, and tilted her head. Her long red hair fell over the sodden lines of her black mission shirt. "Hello!" she chirped. "I'm Kim Possible, and I'm supposed to give you a warm welcome. Hello!"

Two more agents emerged at the top of the ramp with Ron Stoppable between them. The shaggy blond lifted his manacles and shouted, "Booyah!" before his escorts shoved him down the ramp with rifle butts. Ron stumbled and joined Kim on the deck.

"I want you all to start thinking very seriously about your job security," Du told them. "Maybe you would be better suited to burgers and fries. A bunch of grown men, waylaid by a couple of teenagers. Honestly."

Fierce wind billowed from the open hangar door, eating Du's tirade with its howl. Du shielded his eyes to look back at the open hangar mouth. A small reconnaissance craft dressed in GJ black and blue colors hovered into the hangar on its thrusters. Its snub nose dipped toward the deck, leading its struts to touchdown next to Du's triumphant return.

As the recon craft's engines growled down, its hatch extended over its stubby wing. Two tactical GJ agents jogged smartly down the hatch-ramp to secure its bottom for Doctor Director, who appeared in the hatch, looking grim. She tore the equipment belt from her waist and shoved it into the hands of another agent as she marched down the ramp.

Du brightened. His smile threatened to cut the top of his head from the rest of him. "Doctor Director! I didn't know you were out. So good of you to join us. You're just in time to watch your Director of Intelligence bring Kim Possible in for questioning."

Her lone eye slew his smile with a single look. It was then, as she approached him, that Du noticed the dark bruise blossoming on her cheek. A dried red smear lingered in the corner of her mouth. "Yes. I am," she said. Over her shoulder, she barked, "Bring them down."

The agents at the top of the ramp turned, standing flush with the sides of the hatch. Du glanced curiously at the silhouette emerging between the agents. He felt his brain try to kill itself with outrage when that silhouette became the battered visage of Kim Possible.

Kim shuffled down the ramp, dragging her combat boots. Half a GJ jumpsuit and a purple undershirt hung from her in tatters. Du recognized Kim by her hair and eyes alone. The vibrant red and downcast green was her only distinguishable features behind a mask of bruises and dried blood. Heavy metal binders made her wrists droop, and knocked against her legs as she walked.

Behind her, another agent appeared, carrying a small, transparent ball. A wriggling pink blob hammered at the inside of the ball from a dozen different angles at once. Muffled chattering was the only thing to escape the ball, which the agent then secured in a black duffle.

Behind him, three more prisoners emerged. The first prisoner wore a second skin of matte black fabric that ate the light around her. Binders identical to those on Kim made the woman's hands heavy. She held her chin high, tossing back her short crop of dark hair. The second prisoner wore stained pajamas and no bindings. She was less than half Kim's height, who was in turn dwarfed by the agents beside her. Du could hardly believe such a motley collection of girls could have routed an international peacekeeping agency for so long.

A blue figure trailed behind the girls, one that Du recognized. The prisoner's scarred visage spewed complaint loudly before it even came into view. "You can't arrest me! I was kidnapped! I'm a victim here!" Doctor Drakken howled, until the butt of a rifle doubled him over and shoved him into step.

Du gaped as Doctor Director's redheaded prisoner stopped before him, swaying and trembling, as though the act of standing were an epic challenge. He looked between the battered Kim and the perfect, perky Kim he himself had arrested.

"But…but how? But I captured you! You're right here!" Du insisted, and pointed to his Kim.

Trapped between her muscle-bound GJ guards, Du's Kim waved her cuffed hands, and chirped, "Hi! I'm Kim Possible! It's great to see you again, Kim! You too, Yori!"

"Cheerleader. Buffoon," Yori said in stiff reply.

"Booyah!" Du's Ron crowed.

Doctor Director studied Du's captures for a moment. Then she leaned back, nodding. "Congratulations," she said. "You've caught a pair of syntho-drones. Quality ones, too, from the looks of them."

She took the rifle from one of Du's men. Without warning, she cracked the rifle butt through the perky Kim's jaw. Every agent in the bay surged forward at the Doctor's attack, but she stopped them in her tracks with a sharp gesture.

The blow staggered perky Kim, curtaining her face in red hair. When she straightened, she grinned at Du and the Director with a crooked face. "So not the big!" she assured them through a smile that was forty-five degrees off.

"Damnation!" bellowed Du. His fist trembled with the urge to do the same damage to his Director's face as she returned the agent's rifle.

"The good news," added the Director, turning back to Du, "is that I have a spare, and accomplices, who I am officially remanding into your custody." She drew her communicator, tapped it twice, and then tossed it into Du's fumbling grasp. "They're all yours, Commander. If you want them to stay that way, I suggest you not log it. The Load boy is notorious for finding anything anyone types into a computer. I'll be in my office. I expect a call when the interrogations begin."

As Doctor Director left, she brushed past the real Kim. Through blood-encrusted hair and purple swelling, a haunted look followed the aging spy. She met Kim's gaze for only a second. The hurt and disbelief in Kim's eyes was more than Doctor Director could bear.

The communicator shook in Du whitened knuckles as he watched his Kim's—Cheerleader's—smile straighten with sickening slowness. Du's agents found somewhere else to look as Du challenged them in a sweeping glare.

Then he swallowed his rage and faced the four flesh-and-blood prisoners. Both Drakken and Hana shrank from him. Yori arched her glare into his. Kim's eyes remained in the deck.

"Get these children out of my sight," Du uttered. "Separate cells. I want Medical to clear them all for interrogation yesterday. And somebody shove those goo bags somewhere secure until we can take them apart."

"Booyah!" cried Buffoon.

A pair of agents shoved Yori forward, while another pair corralled the whimpering girl beside her. As Hana trembled beneath their descending grasp, she heard a hoarse ghost of a voice that stopped the room.

"Those two stay together," Kim said. Her chin hung heavy, tilting her face down behind her hair. With her back to Hana's keepers, she said, "The girl stays with the ninja."

The agents hovering above Hana exchanged glances. They looked to Du, who repeated his order with a smoldering glare. Firmly, the pair flanked Hana and took her by the arms. Hana shrieked and struggled, scraping her bare heels on the deck as they dragged her.

There were nearly fifty eyewitnesses in the bay at that moment. Each of them would later file incident reports in accordance with GJ SOP. No two of their reports would read exactly the same, save for two details: each report would begin with two highly trained agents leading a juvenile detainee for processing, and each report ended with the same two agents stacked on the floor, their arms broken, with the bound Kim Possible standing over them.

Hana opened her eyes and saw Kim blocking her from a small army of startled GJ agents lifting their rifles. Her would-be keepers lay beside her, groaning and bleeding.

Kim met the pointed rifles without twitching. Her glazed eyes rose to Du, who held his hand high to stay his agents' fire. Her voice did not change one note as she said, "The girls stay together. And Hana needs new clothes."

The agents covering Yori and the whimpering Drakken stared through rifle sights at the prisoner dictating terms. None of them had seen anyone move so fast, or stand so firmly against so many. None of them wanted to gun down a teenage girl.

None of them wanted to end up like their friends on the floor.

"…sir?" one of the agents finally said.

Through a locked jaw, Du growled, "Fine. Put the Gerber with the ninja. But isolate Possible. Maximum lockdown." He spun on his heel, refusing to succumb to the red rage climbing his face as he left.

"If it's a matter of space, I'd be happy to share a cell with the syntho-drones!" Drakken called as the agents shoved him forward. "It's really no trouble!"

Hana fell into step beside Yori, who took the girl's hand in her manacled grasp. Agents closed around them in a wall of muscle and guns. As they began to march, Hana wriggled free from Yori's grasp and threw herself against the agents' legs, stretching her arm as she cried, "No! Kim!"

Her last glimpse of Kim was through another circle of agents escorting the teen in the opposite direction. Kim never looked back at Hana's cry. Her eyes were thousands of miles away, lost in a dark cavern where Global Justice had taken everything from her.

* * *

Ron blinked the seawater from his eyes to watch the fantastic craft climb into the sky. A long, smooth, silvery shape, the airship looked like it had been peeled off the cover of a vintage pulp sci-fi comic. The aircraft pointed its nose into the rising sun and flashed at the tail. An echoing blast reached Ron seconds after the speedy ship flitted over the horizon.

"Well," he drawled, and sputtered at a low wave. "Any bets on that spaceship being the Bad Guy Express?"

Monique bobbed next to him, soggy with despair. Her features sank into a frown. "Does it really matter? They're gone now. And we're gonna die," she moaned. Her voice trailed into the water, bubbling.

He kept his arms and legs moving through their tired motions, ignoring how heavy they felt after hours of treading. "Double or nothing, they were here to collect Wade from that bubble-thing. I mean, what else exciting on the island has happened besides us? It's not like they would come this far on a coconut run."

"We can't go back to the island…Can't fight the tide…Too far anyway…" Monique's mouth sank beneath the surface. She choked and coughed, thrashing back up for air. "We should have just flagged down that bad guy rocket," she gagged.

"You mean the one full of people who want us dead?" asked Ron, raising his pickled brows.

Fitfully, Monique splashed him, and shouted, "Get a clue, Ron! You jumped us miles from shore! No one is coming for us! Wade is gone! And Kim…Kim's…"

Ron's wry expression sank as she stilled. Seeing her point seep into him should have made Monique feel satisfied, but it didn't. She felt guilty and cheap. "Kim is fine, Ron. Hana and Yori too," she murmured. "Kim got them all out of there on the jet. I'm sure of it," she lied.

"I know," he lied back.

Sighing, Monique closed her eyes, and felt the ocean slap her face. Hot tears cut the cold brine on her cheeks. "So this is it, huh? This is how we're gonna go out? Drowned at sea, or torn apart on an island full of psychos?"

Slim silver defeat flashed on Ron's wrist with each treading stroke. He kicked harder as he rubbed the smooth band in contemplation. "Yeah," he said.

"Not how I thought I'd go," she said, and coughed. "I always thought it would be on top of a pile of cocaine and male models after my triumphant final show in Paris. You know, living the designer's dream. That's how it works, right? That's what…" Her voice cracked. "That's how it was supposed to happen. I guess not so much, now…"

Ron brought his hand to the surface. The silver band surfaced with it, ticking away the time they had remaining. Ron watched the second hand circle inside the Team Possible arcs, and mumbled, "Yeah."

Monique tried to sniffle. She sucked in seawater, and coughed again. "In a small, gargled voice, she asked, "Is it okay that I'm scared? I'm not…I've never been here, y'know? Waiting for it to end. I'm scared."

Sighing with decision, Ron twisted the miniscule knob of his watch. Its complex Kimmunicator circuitry hadn't suffered in the water. The watch face's arcs glowed. "We're not gonna die, Mon," he said.

A scoff frothed beneath her nose. "Sidekick optimism? Not so much a flotation device."

"Kimmunicator," he said crisply. "Place call."

A screen of light emerged from the water, its holographic edges dripping and buzzing. It queried Ron with a single word written in bold letters: "RECIPIENT?"

"Wait, Ron!" Monique cried. "Who are you calling? Global Justice will trace it!"

"They won't need to," Ron said. "They'll know where we are when I call them and tell them. Global Justice," he said clearly to the Kimmunicator's query. The screen dismissed the word and offered instead a directory of GJ contacts that Wade had accrued over the years. Ron slid his finger down the screen, scrolling through the list.

Monique sputtered, "You're just going to let those goose-stepping globe heads pick us up? They're going to be ready for you after that beat-down you gave them! They'll send everything they've got to pound your blond locks down through your neck, monkey-fu or not!"

He slapped the water, and shouted, "I'm a little dry on options and wet on everything else here, Mon! It's either get caught by GJ or play Waterworld out here until our legs give. Besides, I still have a few monkey tricks they haven't seen."

She watched him flick through the contact list. "The kind of tricks that beat squadrons of jets?" she said.

Ron clenched his teeth at his hazy memories of the ballroom in Go City. _Yes_, he thought, and shivered. "Look, worst-case scenario, we wind up in prison for the rest of our lives being traded for cigarettes. Best case, we steal ourselves a shiny new jet and start tracking down our growing list of AWOL amigos. Right?"

Monique treaded in silence, watching him. A thought occurred to her through the tired fog of her mind. Ron probably had the strength to swim back to the island. Maybe he could have made it back to the plane if it hadn't sunk. But they both knew that Monique wouldn't make such a trip. The ocean would swallow her for trying.

He had treaded next to her through the night, keeping her talking and swimming after her when the current separated them. Right now, he was abandoning his hope of finding Kim to save her from a watery grave.

"Right," she said, forcing agreement into the word.

Ron grinned, and lifted a finger to Doctor Director's name on the light screen. He stared at the name. For just a second, he hesitated.

Then a glimmer on the horizon caught his attention through the hovering translucent screen. He lowered his hand back into the water, drowning the screen as he watched the glimmer skitter back and forth. As the glimmer grew, Ron spied a spray trailing behind it.

"Hey," he said, and pointed. "Do dolphins have jetpacks yet?"

Monique found the spark blurring the horizon, and squinted. "I think they're still beta-testing them. And there's no way that's a fish, right?"

They watched the glimmer grow closer. It became a streak, leaving a misty rainbow in its wake. A purple paint job emerged through the blinding reflection, with glowing headlights and a dark windshield.

Ron's heart leapt into his throat as a familiar purple car skated over the water, homing directly upon them. The car's tires were turned to the ocean's surface, projecting invisible force that held the car aloft. Great turbine engines jutted from the trunk of the car, their roaring jets extinguished as the car floated next to them.

The Sloth's rear passenger door swung upward, revealing a youthful grin marked with a scar. "Hey," Jim Possible said, and stuck his hand at the bobbing pair. "You guys need a lift? We can take you as far as the East Coast, but you gotta chip in for gas and snacks."

Monique laughed giddily. She was almost afraid to reach for the hand, wondering if it was just a hallucination. But Jim's grip was firm, and pulled her from the water. He had a towel around her the instant she entered the car. She shivered beneath the towel, and chattered, "This is a miracle!"

Tim looked over the driver's seat, draping his arm across its back. "Actually, it's more like a belated success. We've been trying to track you guys for days now. It's taken us forever to catch up. What the hell are you guys doing way out here?"

"Pickling," Ron grunted as Jim hauled him out of the ocean. "How did you find us? I've had my watch off to keep the Globies away. You tracked it in the eight seconds it's been on?"

"Not your Kimmunicator," Tim said, and tapped the blinking GPS terminal in the dashboard. "We used the tracking chip Wade put in you. Wait, where is Wade?"

"Gone," Ron grunted. He kneaded the back of his neck, and added, "Seriously, where is that stupid chip? And where's Kim?"

Jim rolled his eyes as he wrapped Ron in another towel. "Gee, what kind of awesome adventures have you guys been on since we left you totally behind?" he said, mimicking Ron's sodden tone with sarcasm. "I bet you guys have gone through a lot to get the old car working again to rescue our ungrateful asses."

"My ass is very, very grateful," Monique said from within the cocooning folds of her towel.

With a chattering smile, Ron said, "Not ungrateful. Just jaded by years of your sister's derring-do." He sobered, and said, "Now where is she? We've got epic problems, ones that go way beyond my significant need for dry underwear right now. Wade's been Wade-napped, and we need to save him."

Worry bounced between Jim and Tim in a wordless exchange. The former sealed up the back of the hovering car, while the latter began swinging the car around in the direction they had come.

"That's, um, one of the adventures we're working on," Tim mumbled.

The back of the car became a jumble of elbows and knees as Jim fished under the seat. He found a small orange box from which he pulled survival bars. He handed one to Monique, who opened it with her teeth and devoured it in two bites. "GJ got her," Jim said, and handed Ron the other bar.

"They got all of them," Tim said. "Yori, Hana, Rufus…even Drakken."

"Drakken?" Monique asked around a mouthful of processed nutrients. "What the hell?"

Jim grimaced as he clambered into the front of the car. "It's a long story."

"Kim broke him out," Tim said.

Scowling, Jim retorted, "Well, sure. It's short when you leave out all the good parts."

Ron chewed while the twins snapped at one another. His thoughtful tone ended their spat: "How do you know GJ has them? Do you know where they are?"

Scoffing, Jim said, "We've had the computer scanning every media source for any mention of you guys. Turns out this big doofy guy overpowered the 'teen terrorist' herself. GJ hasn't shut up about how they're detaining her in some secret location."

"The only problem," Tim said, reaching for a keypad in the dash, "is that we've got eyes on the activity logs of every GJ facility bigger than a broom closet."

"Their firewall may as well be a padlock sitting on top of their mainframe," Jim quipped, smirking.

"Except we got bupkis from their mainframe. If they've got her, they're not saying where, even on their own system."

Monique powered through a second bar. "How is it that all of the taxpayer money in the world can't buy a computer you two can't hack?"

Jim scoffed. "You can't buy something that can't be made, gorgeous."

At Tim's coaxing, the dashboard computer projected a map of the world into the air. The flat hologram hovered, alighted with glowing dots, each one corresponding to a Global Justice site. "With Kim off the grid, it could be months before we figure out which one they've got her at. They could even have another facility we don't know about."

"Stranger things have happened," Jim admitted. "Recently, too."

After licking the nutrient bar wrapper clean, Ron leaned forward to consider the map. He didn't need two seconds before he concluded, "They're in Middleton. You gonna finish that, Mon?" he asked of Monique's second bar.

"Wait. What?" the twins harmonized.

Monique had already swallowed the last of her bar, and glanced in confusion at the wrapper. "This? This empty piece of foil that has, like, three little nibblets of chocolate on it? Am I going to finish that?"

"Yeah," said Ron.

"…yes," Monique said, and then turned the wrapper inside out to slurp its crumbs.

"Forget the stupid chocolate for a second!" Jim snapped.

"How could you know that GJ took Kim back home? They don't even have a base there anymore," insisted Tim.

"Drakken blew it up, remember?" added Jim. "Or, I guess he disintegrated it."

A humorless chuckle tugged at Ron's mouth. He leaned back in his seat. "Oh, ye of too much brains. Not every secret is on a computer. Sometimes they're in people's heads…or on a family videotape your mom refuses to throw out, and then your little sister finds it and threatens to YouTube it unless you buy her an ice cream cake."

The twins exchanged one perplexed expression. "I think we got off-topic again," they said together.

"GJ rushed construction of a new bungalow right after Drakken sank their old one," said Ron. "If it's not done, it'll be almost. Funny thing is, back when KP had our heroics on hiatus, Doctor Director asked us to help test their new place's security. I guess we get to do that now."

Jim shook his head. "No, no. No, no, no. A new facility that's not fully on the grid yet, I can buy. But if Doctor Director already knows you know about the place, why would she take Kim there?"

Any trace of humor evaporated from Ron's face. His eyes fluttered closed as his head thudded back against the seat. "Something tells me Ol' Eyepatch isn't calling as many of the shots as she used to. This new guy, he's something else. He's out for blood, like some kind of…blood…guy. Hound? Whatever. Two bits gets you a dollar, he's got KP back home. You two Scarfaces get us there. I have a plan."

As Jim clambered into the front of the Sloth, he said, "You have a plan? You have a plan to break into a government facility so secret that it isn't even listed in its own secret government bureau database? You're going to bust in using all the resources of two runaway geniuses, a hottie, an ex-sidekick, and a refurbished car from the Seventies? There's a plan for that?"

"And what about Wade?" Tim added. "We might be able to pull off something this insane with Wade behind a keyboard. What happened to him? How are we supposed to rescue him too?"

Long, loud, ratcheting snores answered them from the back. Ron slept with a bone-tired fervor that no irritated look could pierce. His head lolled on the back seat as he unconsciously drew his towel into a makeshift blanket.

"Oh. Great," the twins sighed.

Sliding next to Ron, Monique pressed into his side, stretching her towel around them both. "How long until we reach Middleton, double cuteness?"

"Four hours," Tim answered.

Scoffing, Jim added, "Give or take air traffic."

A yawn followed Monique's heavy head onto Ron's shoulder. She gave into her exhaustion, murmuring, "Wake us up when we hit city limits. It shouldn't take us more than fifteen minutes to come up with something crazy."

Her last thought before drifting off was of her wayward friends. The list, she knew, kept growing. In a handful of hours, it might grow to include all of them.

* * *

"Wade Load. Government contractor. Freelance consultant. Heroic troubleshooter. Wanted fugitive. Prisoner." Professor Dementor's mouth quirked haughtily.

Rolling his eyes, Wade staggered down the ramp of the strange aircraft, his lurching steps propelled by Shego's foot. The hangar of Dementor's hidden lair echoed with his squeaking sneakers. "Please tell me we aren't going to the old 'politely tough-talk the prisoner' trope. I am way too tired for clichés."

Dementor chuckled at the bottom of the ramp, watching Shego muscle his prisoner to him. The portly teen fell to his knees at Dementor's feet. "And in very short order," continued Dementor, "you will be one of two things. What that thing will be is dependent on you level of cooperation in the next few minutes. So consider carefully the deal I am about to make you, yes?"

A snide retort gathered in Wade's mouth. He was forced to swallow it when Shego grabbed his hair and jerked his head backward. "Listen up, pot pie. I know you and your little buddies like to talk the talk whether you can walk it or not. But I have been up all night, and I am seriously not in the mood to hear your middle school idea of being a hero. M'kay?"

"I'm listening," Wade said hoarsely. Then he gasped as Shego released his hair.

Wade's gasp was cut short as Dementor drew a blue, bizarre gun from the back of his belt and leveled it at Wade's head. After tense seconds of letting Wade stare down the barrel, Dementor smiled, and reversed the gun in his grip. "This is 'Doctor' Drakken's mind reader ray, a device he designed to read, copy, and store the information of a target's brain."

Tentatively, Wade took the gun and examined it. After a moment, he said, "This is incredible. You're sure it's Drakken's?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Dementor grumbled. "And unfortunately, his mastery of electrical engineering is rivaled only by his logistical acumen. I find myself unable to grasp its design to any functional degree."

The gun's grip popped open, revealing a small access panel packed with what Wade would only call "circuitry" if he was feeling generous. "So this is how he jacked Kim's style in the observatory?"

An ugly look darkened Shego's face. "Yeah," she grunted.

"So…what? You want to fix it? Duplicate it?" Wade said, and closed the ray gun.

Dementor smirked at the curiosity in Wade's voice. Even captured and alone, Team Possible's fixer remained a rogue inventor with a fascination for the bizarre. "I need the device integrated with my former Entropy Cannon to amplify its potential. And I need its purpose slightly…altered."

"And you think I'll do that for you," Wade said. A satisfied smirk crossed his face as he added, "Because you can't."

Dementor's expression sharpened. "You possess a knack for technological subversion and retro-engineering. I suspect such a task to be well within your powers, Mister Load."

"Duh," said Wade. "But what I meant was: what makes you think I would ever, in a hundred trillion googol years, do anything to help you? Because I'm pretty sure you'd be better off waiting for universal heat death."

The diminutive scientist snapped his fingers.

Green fire bracketed Wade's head. Shego's palms hovered mere inches from his ears. The heat grew unbearable in an instant. Wade's brow swam in fat, rolling droplets of sweat.

"You will do this for several reasons, Mister Load," Dementor told him. "You are alone and unarmed. You are surrounded. Your friends cannot help you. Shego will kill you slowly if you deny me once more.

"But most of all," Dementor said, looming close to Wade's fiery cage, "you will do this because you aren't sure if you can, and you want to find out."

Wade couldn't argue Dementor's last point. His mind already swam with the new pathways to take the gun's confused circuitry. But the thought of helping Dementor in the slightest made his stomach turn. Any inch he gave Dementor would make him party to the scientist's megalomaniacal schemes, threat of death or no.

But…

But Wade didn't want to die.

For all the times he had been thrust into danger, especially in the last few days, he felt terrified in Shego's clutches. Ron and Monique weren't there. Kim was long gone, maybe arrested, or maybe even dead. And he was at the mercy of people he had helped send to prison multiple times—each—who would probably love to see how many pieces they could tear him into before he stopped screaming.

Fighting to keep his voice steady, Wade said, "You know what? Sure. I'll put Drakken's brain gun in your Cannon."

The fire in Shego's hands extinguished. Dementor chuckled. Then he drew a deep breath, and bellowed, "Possible! Kommt hier, and bring the prisoner to the Kanonetechniklaboratorium!"

In just seconds, the hangar access doors parted, and Wade's relieved breath became a gasp as the likeness of Ron Stoppable marched sullenly into their midst, wearing a cap of close-cropped red hair. "What?" he grunted.

Dementor scowled. "Firstly, 'no' to the giving me attitude in front of my prisoner," he snapped. "Secondly, escort said prisoner to the Cannon. Provide him with whatever tools and assistance he requires to complete the project. Should he even think of entertaining the notion of considering escape, you are to crush him. Klar?"

"Yeah, klar," Sim muttered. But when his eyes fell upon the astonished Wade, he gasped. "Whoa. You?"

Shock spread Wade's eyes wide. He remembered the duplicate Ron from the fight in Dreidelton, but seeing the doppelganger in the light struck Wade with a whole new sense of astonishment. "So," he said to Dementor, clinging desperately to his last shred of bravado, "are you colorblind, or just such a bad scientist that you can't get your clones' hair right?"

Growling, Dementor shoved Wade into Sim's surprised grasp. Sim stared, lost for a long, uncomfortable moment in Wade's face. Then he shook himself free and spun Wade into a forced march out the door.

"For the record, I think it's the second one," Shego said sidelong to Dementor as she watched the two teens leave.

"You are remembering that I had nothing to do with the actual production of Possible, yes?" Dementor said.

Shego smiled. "Vividly. Also: final answer."

Heavy footsteps clanked down the ramp of the aircraft behind them. "Hey, whoa, dude. Nobody told me there would be a quiz. Seriously."

Dementor whirled, and his irritation ballooned into apoplectic rage at the sight of Motor Ed leading a cavalcade of ragged villains out of the aircraft. A few of the familiar faces led the pack, followed by petty thugs and ragged, unshaven henchmen that Dementor could hardly muster enough notice to hate.

"What. Is. THIS?" Dementor thundered. "Lady Shego, why have you dared to sully my new headquarters with this…this circus of dilapidated, incompetent offal?"

Wincing, Adrena Lynne clutched her temples, and staggered into Motor Ed's back. "Oh, God, could you people keep your rage under three thousand decibels? I have an extreme headache in my…everything."

Shego's eyes rolled. "They wandered into the jet while I was out grabbing the fat kid. I wanted to run them out, but I was afraid if I lit them on fire, their stink would catch and blow up the jet. So I locked them in the hold, and told them they could either shut up or find out what high-altitude decompression felt like."

"Their stink would…" Dementor sputtered, wringing his hands through the air. "You are a master of the martial arts! Could you not beat them soundly and throw them off my magnificent air-craft?"

Her nose wrinkled. "Mm'kay, I hope you were planning on taking over the world just to give it to me, because otherwise there is no way you're paying me enough to touch these 'people,' " she said, and framed her fingers around the last word.

"I be takin' offense t' yer air quotes, missy," Killigan said, stumping to the bottom of the ramp. "Besides, we be done freeloadin' off of table scraps and litter. We're ready t' get back in the real game, even if tha' means doin' it on yer coattails."

Dementor sneered at Killigan, casting particular scorn at the Scotsman's rusty shotgun of a cane. "Look at you lot. What could you traitors and filth possibly offer me? You are one missed meal shy of death, and one missed bath shy of becoming apes."

As Dementor uttered that last word, the lanky, unshaven shadow of Monty Fiske came alive behind Killigan. His eyes sparked as he screeched, "I am not an ape!"

Glancing back at the panting former man-monkey, Killigan said, "Oh, aye, we're nae a sight t' be seen now. And ye have this shiny base, and even a couple o' henchmen o' yer own. All ye could e'er want."

"Exactly," Dementor said.

Leaning forward, Killigan fixed Dementor with a hard stare. "We've thrown e'erything we all had at the lass. Twice. All our brains and brawn and magic and arsenals couldn't stop her. So the question ye have to ask yerself," said Killigan, his voice dropping into a whisper, "is, do ye think y' can take the lass all on yer own? Are ye willing t' risk it all for a bit o' pride?"

The Scotsman's words washed over Dementor. His stony expression remained a moment more. Then his scowl deepened, and he stepped back.

"You are all restricted to the hangar or to Lab Twelve," Dementor said curtly. "You will bathe in the chemical shower until your stench becomes tolerable once more. You may use whatever equipment you find to make yourselves useful."

Motor Ed pumped his fist, belting out a laugh that nearly doubled the nearby Adrena Lynne. "Yeah! The Legion of Villainous Evil is back in the game!"

Dementor turned at once to level his hand at the burly mechanical genius. As the scientist's fist clenched, a matrix of energy constructed itself around the gauntlet. In an instant, the glowing lattice arced from Dementor's fist and plunged into Ed. The energy chewed a perfect circle in Ed's chest, leaving blackened edges of burning, noxious flesh surrounding a clear window, through which Lynne stared, horrified. Ed's triumphant expression slackened as he dropped onto his knees, and then toppled forward.

"Let me be perfectly klar," Dementor said to the silent crowd of super villains. His fist smoldered still. "This is not a partnership. This is not a relationship of equals. If I choose to call upon you, you will do as I command without hesitation or delay. Should I decide that you hold no value to my cause, I will eliminate you. Do we have an understanding?"

The pack of feral villains stood in silence. Pyro Pete was the only exception, as he stood over the smoldering remains of Ed, wafting the smoke into his face while he giggled. Eventually, Killigan limped forward, and stood as tall as he could. His weather-beaten cap barely topped Dementor's helmet. "Aye, lad. We have an understanding," he said gruffly.

Dementor turned on his heel and marched out of the hangar. Shego followed, tossing a smug look at her former cohorts. As the doors closed behind her, her expression collapsed into blank concern. "So…" she said to the back of Dementor's head. "Now we're blowing away the ones on our side too? Not that I mind, exactly. Not really. I just want to keep track of the game plan."

His sudden stop almost caught her unawares. She teetered on the tips of her boots as he looked back. A dark look burned in his helmet. "There is only one side, Lady Shego: ours. Everything else will submit or burn."

She watched him continue down the stark corridor without her. A leaden feeling filled her from the bottoms of her soles, climbing up her legs, until her very thoughts were weighed with a strange hesitation. "Okay, then…" she said to the empty air.

* * *

The picture on Cameron Du's desk screamed at him. For every second he sat behind his desk, the aging spy endured a pair of deafening eyes and a boyish, enthusiastic smile. If he could have—if he were stronger—he would have turned the picture on its face. He would have put it in a drawer. He would have left it at home, where it belonged.

Instead, Du sat there with a blank report waiting on his computer monitor, and stared back at the frozen image of his son. With the festivities of graduation day behind him, Will's enthusiasm could hardly be contained in a mere picture. He shone, so bright that it hurt Cameron to look.

The intercom on his desk buzzed, chasing the first inklings of tears from his eyes. He hardened his voice and punched the button. "What?" he rasped.

"_Sir_." The voice of Agent Dini grated through the speaker. "_You asked to be notified when Kim Possible was cleared for interrogation._"

Du stared at the intercom in mute confusion, and then pressed the button again. "She's been in custody for five hours, Dini. I know it doesn't happen often, but Tactical Division remembers what interrogation protocol means, correct?"

"_Yes, sir: sleep deprivation and controlled malnutrition resulting appropriate medical stress levels, sir,_" Dini answered.

Tiredly, Du said, "Then you're also aware that the protocol typically takes days to effect."

If there was any trace of irony in Dini's reply, she hid it too well for Du to find. "_Yes, sir. Except…Sickbay recorded her at appropriate levels all across the board when they processed her for internment. If anything, she's almost too weak to meet interrogation regs. She's, um, apparently been doing it to herself these past few days. The doctors aren't really sure how she's still upright._"

Du started to rub his nose, and then winced at the hot pain flashing underneath the white tape that held it in place. "Very well," he said through his teeth. "I want Possible in Interrogation Room Four in five minutes."

"Yes, sir," Dini replied. "I'll see to the preparations myself, sir."

Du reached for the button, and then hesitated. "Agent? Do not inform the Director until I instruct you to. Understood?"

There was a long pause, and then Dini answered, "_Yes, sir._" The intercom hissed and clicked, and left Du in silence.

He stared at the black speaker for over a minute before the reality of Dini's call reached his legs. He rose mechanically from his desk and squeezed into the base's narrow corridors. The base's personnel turned sideways and hugged the wall, saluting as he shouldered through them. They barely received a salute in return.

The trip across the base happened in a daze. When Du found his senses again, he stood outside the Interrogation Center's observation room. His hand trembled almost imperceptibly as he entered his code into the door's keypad. The door swished inside its housing. Du held his breath and stepped inside.

Six windows lined the room's walls, three on either side. Each window peered into one of the six interrogation rooms. A flash of color through the far left window drew him to the glass. His broken nose all but pressed against the barrier as he stared at the broken, bound redhead inside the room.

"And, hast thou slain the Jabberwock?" he murmured. The memory of the smiling picture on his desk flashed before him. "Come to my arms, my beamish boy. Oh frabjous day. Calloo. Callay…"

With another code, Du entered the interrogation room. Practice wiped his face clear of the roiling tempest in his chest. He took his seat at the room's only table, and examined the clipboard that waited for him there.

Kim never twitched. She hung limply in her chair, wearing a sleeveless orange prisoner jumpsuit, and handcuffs on each wrist that bound her to the chair's arms.

GJ's doctors had re-dressed her wounds. Her arms were mummified in tape and gauze to protect a series of lengthy, nasty burns. Nearly every other square inch of her was bruised or cut somehow. An intravenous line fed saline into her arm from a tall metal stand set next to her chair. Her swollen eyes never lifted from the cold metal table. They barely registered the movement of Du's reflection as he leaned forward.

Lacing his fingers together, Du said, "You aren't going to tell me where Demens is, are you?"

The soft rasp of her breath was Kim's only answer.

He leaned back and took up his clipboard, pretending to flip through its pages as though he hadn't already memorized every iota of data on Kim Possible that Global Justice possessed. "Now, if your fan club is to be believed, you won't tell me anything because you don't know anything, because you would never work for Demens. You spent your entire pre-adult life fighting him and people like him. It wouldn't make sense."

She didn't move.

"Unless, of course, you just cracked."

He watched her intently for a reaction. She didn't even blink.

"As I said, you spent most of your life fighting these crackpots," Du continued, shrugging. "What's the old adage? 'Stare into the abyss long enough, and the abyss stares back?' Becoming what you hate most? The world is hard and cruel, and these costumed megalomaniacs can move a lot of cash. They have power. That's why Global Justice exists, after all. If they weren't a real threat, I wouldn't have a job. A job which you always seemed content to do for free…unless that changed.

"But do you want to know what I really think?" he asked.

Kim's ragged breathing stopped.

Rifling through the clipboard's pages, he showed Kim a black-and-white image of the Boise Locker heist, which prominently displayed Team Possible directing a group of Dementor's henchmen. "I think your motive doesn't matter because I can place you at our facility at the time of the heist. And, on the off chance that you can provide a solid alibi, I have you attacking GJ personnel, stealing government equipment, fleeing custody, breaking a felon out of maximum security lockup, and about a dozen other charges I haven't dreamed up yet.

"As of this minute," Du crowed, taking back his clipboard, "you are no longer a person. You're a number in a box. And thanks to the Champion Act, I get to keep you in that box, without a trial, without a fuss, for as long as I deem absolutely necessary to global peace."

Her eyes made the barest flicker of motion toward him. Her shoulders twitched with a single, shallow breath.

Du slammed the clipboard on the edge of the table, breaking it in half. His chair tumbled backwards as he rose, slamming his palms on the tabletop. Hot color flushed across his cheeks as he drew his face into Kim's. "Say something!" he bellowed.

Flecks of his spittle hung on Kim's cheek. She blinked once, and lifted her heavy gaze to meet his. Her cracked lips parted, and a soft wheeze escaped, as though she were trying to remember how to speak. On the fourth try, she said, "I'm sorry about Will."

The red anger spread across Du's face.

"And I'm sorry I didn't realize it before," she rasped. "I don't know how I could have missed the family resemblance. Officious, pompous…you even have the same haircut."

"Stop," he growled.

"But what happened to Will was awful." Her voice was a ghost. "He deserved a lot better than that. I'm sorry."

Breath ragged, Du collected a page from the broken clipboard and slapped it onto the tabletop. He pushed it under Kim's nose with trembling hand. But his voice resumed a calm, even keel. "Will did his duty; he died guarding two civilians in his charge. No commander could ask more of his subordinate."

Kim's eyes closed. Her chin fell to her chest, making a curtain of her hair.

His finger rang against the table as he tapped the paper. "This is a full confession. It implicates you in both of the Boise Locker attacks, the Middleton escape, and breaking Drakken out of prison," he said. "If you sign this, we forego the trial. We forego the secret cell. I'm offering you life in prison without parole. If you play ball, we'll send you to a medium security facility and segregate you from the general prisoner population."

She didn't move. His face tightened.

"Let me be clear," he said slowly. "This confession implicates you, and only you, in these crimes. Your friends walk. I know a ringleader when I see one." He leaned over the table, drawing his face down to hers. "You've created this cult of personality, duping these innocent people into fighting your battles for you. After what you pulled, I could lock up anyone who ever so much as gave you a stick of gum. But I Just. Want. You."

Du hovered above her, waiting. In his years of interrogation, he had cracked some of the hardest villains on the planet with nothing but words. This blank wall in a chair that refused him wasn't some hardened criminal that needed breaking. Kim Possible was an arrogant polymath that had burned too bright too quickly. Like so many of the lunatics she had fought, she kept craving more. More power. More control. And yet, she still remained a teenaged girl.

The seat squeaked as Du settled back again. He folded his hands on the tabletop and smiled. "How well do you think your boyfriend will do in prison?"

The hair over Kim's face stirred, just a little. A sliver of green peered through the red curtain, shrinking at Du's smug expression.

"That's right," Du said. "We found your little sidekick. Right after Middleton, in fact. And let me tell you, he is not handling incarceration as well as you seem to be. He's been crying a lot. He's been asking for you, too. I think he was almost relieved when the guards told him we had captured you and the two little ninjas."

A ripple stirred the hair at Kim's lips as she whispered, "Ron."

His smile widened. "Ron," he echoed. "He's been so worried. Imagine how worried he'll be when he's standing next to you before a grand jury, facing these charges as a co-conspirator."

Slowly, Kim lifted her head. Her hair slid away, revealing a haunted look buried under days' worth of bruises and cuts. Her eyes shook, pupils dilated, as she struggled to focus on the piece of paper before her.

"This guillotine blade that's poised above your neck? It will fall on him, too," Du said. "He'll be sent away for the rest of his life in the worst prison we can find." His face tightened and his voice dropped an octave. "I will personally see to it that he shares a cell block with every Tom, Dick, and Monkey Fist you two have ever thwarted.

"Or," he said, his voice softening again, "you sign this confession. You protect him. That's what you want, isn't it? A hero protects her sidekick. And I truly believe that, somewhere inside you, you still believe you're a hero, Kim Possible. You have one last chance to be that hero: protect the people you love. Protect Ron. All it will take is one signature."

The long silence pulled Du's smile all the way to his eyes. He knew he had won. And it took every ounce of his professional experience to keep himself from laughing as Kim's hand drifted to the tabletop. The handcuff chain gave her barely enough slack to reach the paper and pen.

Her fingertips brushed the cheap, bulk ballpoint pen when a disembodied voice crackled above them. "_Commander Du! Sir!_"

Du's brows crashed together as Kim's hand froze. "Dini? I'm in the middle of an interrogation! What is so important that you have to violate—" He counted silently. "—fifteen protocols?"

"_We have a situation outside that demands your attention, sir_."

Her stammering report stopped him cold. "Outside? As in, outside of the base?"

"_…yes, sir._"

"Dini, we're in a secret mountain fortress. The one advantage to basing our operations out of this action figure playset is the anonymity it offers. Are we talking about a couple of free climbers that wandered too close to the perimeter? Perhaps an ill-tempered mountain goat?"

"_No, sir. It's… We have video, sir. Camera Thirty-six. I really think you need to see this, Commander._"

He pressed circles into his temples. Pushing away from the table, he approached the room's two-way mirror. The reflection shimmered as he pressed his palm to the glass, activating its dormant touch interface. The mirror became a large, interactive screen, and drew the outline of a video window as Du brushed his fingertips across its surface. "Fine. Send the feed down to the Interrogation Room."

"_…sir,_" Dini replied several seconds later, "_I don't think—_"

The glass shook under his palm. "Dini! You interrupted the most important interrogation you will ever know of in your rapidly shortening career. Now, since this matter demands my attention, you will follow my orders, or I will find a marmoset capable of doing so, stuff it into a Global Justice uniform, grant it a field commission, and give it preferential duty roster assignment! Now stream the feed!" he snarled.

Seconds later, the empty video window in the mirror flickered, filling with the image of a mountainside outcropping. Mist whispered across the crags, tendrils of the cloud that blanked the sky behind the rock. The muted colors of the security feed washed everything into a gray tapestry.

Everything on the screen remained still at first. Du didn't see Dini's issue until the figure turned its head toward the camera. The movement forced Du to realize the black masculine shape standing at the left side of the frame. Only once he saw it did Du recognize the outline of the battle suit that had humiliated GJ's Tactical division in Middleton.

"_Attention, Global Jerks!_" The voice of Ron Stoppable rang tinnily through the connection. The suit's blank, masking visor stared right through the screen and struck Du cold. "_I hear you've been looking for a handsome blond criminal. Well, I think I've got a solid lead for you. I don't suppose there's a reward, is there?_"

* * *

No stranger to super-science, Wade was nevertheless amazed at the vile abomination of technology Dementor was forcing him to augment, and the lab in which he was kept prisoner.

He lay on a dolly, staring up at the exposed guts of the Entropy Cannon. The disassembled pieces of Drakken's Memory Ray lay splayed on his chest, strung together by its wiring. With a tool in each hand, and another clenched in his teeth, he pried at the spaghetti tangle of conduits packed into the Cannon's housing.

Mouthing the clamp into place, Wade spat at the metallic tang in his mouth, and grimaced at the new configuration. "I'll give this for the little turd: when he shoves a project up your ass at Shego-point, he doesn't do it small." His grimace deepened, and he added, "And that sounded way less gross in my head. Man, I miss my bubble."

He grasped the Cannon's housing and hauled himself out from under its edge. Cradling the pieces of the Memory Ray, he began searching the room's expansive workbenches for the delicate tools he would need to break the laws of nature and men. He selected a soldering iron and examined its quality.

"So, are you just going to stare at me this whole time, or are we gonna kiss?" Wade said absently, and squinted at the tool.

The redheaded Ron guarding the lab door blinked, moving for the first time since the lab had sealed behind them. He crossed his arms, then uncrossed them, and then crossed them again. "Prisoners are to remain silent," he snapped.

Wade placed the Memory Ray pieces on a workbench. He fit a pair of magnifying goggles over his eyes, and began to solder new connections into Drakken's chaotic circuit boards. As tired and miserable as Wade was, his hands moved with flawless precision. "Sure," he said between soldering, "we can't let 'the prisoner' flap his gums. Then you might imprison him without food and force him to complete a weapon of mass destruction. You know, if you won't let me out, and you won't make me a sandwich, the least you can do is talk to me."

His guard hesitated, and then replied, "I don't have anything to say to you."

Wade snorted, nearly ruining his delicate work. "Well, that's a lie," he said. "Nice to know that you at least fib like Ron."

"I am nothing like him!" the redhead snarled.

The sudden outburst made Wade smile. "That's one hell of a nerve I just touched. And that was another lie, by the way. One of my best friends has those same freckles. You are a little light on the quippage, though." He set his work aside and turned around. "So what's your deal, anyway?"

Stony silence gathered in the redhead's face.

"Oh, come on," Wade cajoled. "Are you a clone? Syntho-drone? A transdimensional version of Ron with a dye job? Shapeshifter? Holographically cloaked assassin? Ooh!" he cried, brightening. "Are you Kim and Ron's kid from the future, traveled back in time to infiltrate Dementor's operation to avert some horrible disaster?"

"Enough!" the redhead barked. "I am none of these ridiculous things! And I am devoted to my father's cause!"

The flexing and snarling didn't even make Wade flinch. He leaned back against the workbench, bracing his palms against the table's edge. "See, now I believe you." As his guard glowered, Wade shrugged, and said, "Okay, fine. How about a name? Do you have a name?"

After a long moment, the redhead said, "Sim. My name is Sim."

"Sim. Is that a family name?" Wade asked. A sour look was his answer. He raised his hands, and said, "Right, right. You've got nothing to say to me."

"Get back to work," Sim commanded him.

"Okay, so you've got one thing to say to me." Wade resumed his work on the collection of circuit boards. The tap of the soldering iron filled their silence for several minutes. As he worked, Wade half-watched his guard. The way Sim moved, and the way he talked, struck Wade with a surreal feeling he couldn't quite explain.

Except for the eyes and hair, Sim was a dead ringer for Ron Stoppable. But Sim moved with purpose, not the easygoing lope Wade associated with Ron. When Sim had raised his voice, his eyes had flashed like a forge, filling his gaze with a blend of steel and iron. Wade had never seen a look like that in Ron's eyes.

"Why did you save me?" Wade asked without warning.

Sim blinked. "What?"

Looking back, Wade said, "Back at the apartment building. That was you, wasn't it? Why did you save me from Global Justice? You're obviously working for the competition, so keeping me locked up in a GJ secret prison would be a big win for you."

Sim stumbled over his own thoughts. Even Shego and his father didn't know what he had done for Wade in Dreidelton. He had tried to push the incident out of his own thoughts, because when he asked himself that same question, he couldn't come up with a satisfying answer.

"I…dreamed of you," Sim said. "Before father woke me, I dreamed of you. I dreamed of Kim and Ron, and my lives in Middleton."

Wade's eyebrows rose sharply. "Your 'lives?' " he echoed. "What does that mean? And what do you mean, Dementor 'woke' you?"

Sim scowled, and squirmed. "Father and Shego rescued me, and woke me. They told me of my true destiny to save the world from the hubris and shortsightedness of mankind. But before them, I dreamed of all of you. Before them, you were my friend. So I saved you, because that's what you do for your friends."

"Friends," Wade said, trying to fathom Sim's strange admission. "And now I'm your prisoner? How does that work?" As Sim fell into impenetrable silence, Wade thought further, and asked, "If Dementor and Shego rescued you—if you're not one of the little guy's experiments—then what are you? Where did you come from?"

* * *

Du gaped at the screen for ten full seconds before composing himself. He tapped the controls of the digital projection in the mirrored glass, activating the external speakers nearest to the active camera feed. "Is that you, Stoppable? We've been looking everywhere for you."

The tiny figure in the battle suit waved at the camera as Du silently seethed. He could feel Kim Possible's eyes drilling through his back, watching the security feed. His entire interrogation had been shattered in a matter of seconds.

But Stoppable's arrival opened up whole new doors into closing this quagmire he had inherited from Doctor Director. Playing Possible and Stoppable against each other would be easier with Stoppable actually in custody.

But firstly, he needed to attend to one small detail. "Let me make this simple for you, sidekick: remove your fancy suit and surrender yourself to the security detail currently en route to your position."

"_Yeah, it's good to see you too. Sorry it too so long to visit, but I lost the supersonic jet we borrowed from you guys. I don't suppose I could have another one, could I? I'd bring it back with a full tank._"

Du leaned hard against the glass, glaring at the security feed. "This is your last chance, Stoppable. Lie down with your hands behind your head, and we take you in without a scratch. Otherwise—"

"_Mmn, no. See, here's how this is going to go instead._" Folded arms and a jutting chin met Du's invisible gaze. "_You're gonna do three things for me, jarhead._"

"You little—!" Du hissed.

"_No, you listen! I know you think you've got me pegged. You think I'm the dopey, loser sidekick. And, you know, any other day of the week you would probably be right. I've got some pretty fly footwork, but running face-first into an army of GJ agents sounds like suicide any way you look at it._

"_Except, here's the thing._" A pair of fingers rose toward the camera. "_There are two people on this planet—just two—that I get my act together for. There are two people I love so much that, for them, there is no line. There is no limit. I will do anything and everything to save those two people, and you, you lucky son of a bitch, just happen to be holding both of them._

"_So you're gonna do three things for me. You're going to let everyone go. You're going to back the hell off. And you're going to say the following sentence: Ron Stoppable, you are the ninja king. Feel free to paraphrase that last one if you need to._"

Gnashing his teeth, Du bit down on his first two responses, which were more profanity than anything. "Where do you get off ordering me, boy? Who do you think you are?"

"_Because, if you don't…_" A jaunty salute through the camera lit fire in Du's eyes. "_Then I come in there and I make you._"

A single thrown rock crushed three thousand dollars of surveillance equipment. The camera feed dissolved into static. Du snarled and slapped the projected controls, rattling the observation glass as he opened the communication from Dini to include all departments. "All agents, now here this! I want every available warm body armed and outside at Zone East-Three. We have a Class Alpha threat: lethal force is authorized, but I want containment and capture if possible."

As he closed the channel, Du's hand absently brushed his sidearm. With every agent outside trying to capture the super-suited Stoppable, Du would have to secure Kim Possible himself, and quickly. He didn't intend to risk his only major asset by being sloppy.

But when Du turned to collect his prisoner, all of his intentions became moot as Kim swung her metal chair through his face. The blow bounced his head off the two-way glass hard enough to leave a web of cracks. Du collapsed onto the floor, landing squarely on his broken nose.

Huffing, Kim let the chair drop. It half-dangled from her restraints. "I warned you about handcuffing me," she said to the insensate agent. She draped the chair across his back and began clumsily searching his pockets until she found the cuffs' key. She took his keycard for good measure, and relieved his sidearm of its clip.

Once freed, Kim rubbed her wrists. She noticed the sticky warmth trickling down her arm, and pressed at the bleeding spot where she had ripped out her IV drip. Her head swam. Her legs buckled, throwing her forward. She caught herself against the wall, leaning her face against the cool metal as she fought to keep her eyes open.

She clenched her bloody hand. The muscle and tendon burned with exhaustion, but she kept her fist tight. Pain blossomed up and down her arm. She took hold of the pain, and used it to chase away the blackness nipping at her vision.

People were still counting on her, which meant that her body didn't get to quit.

Du's keycard opened the door. Kim lurched out into the corridors of Global Justice central, determined to find her friends. Her bloody handprint lingered on the doorframe behind her.

* * *

The muffled commotion drew Yori's ear flat against the door of her cell. She closed her eyes and listened, following the troop of boots that rattled up and down the hall of the detention area. As Yori held her breath, the footfalls grew distant, and then disappeared.

"Ready yourself. I believe we may have a chance to escape our incarceration," she said.

Her cellmate, Hana, sat on the opposite side of the cold metal room, glowering at Yori from the cell's only bunk. "I'm not going anywhere with you. I want Kim."

Yori closed her eyes against a wave of bubbling frustration. "Please, child, we—"

"My name is Hana!" the little girl bellowed in retort. "Stop talking to me like I'm not a person!"

Scowling in kind, Yori replied, "I am talking to you like you are a fellow prisoner in need of escaping with me. You are under my care now, child, and such care would be easier to administer if you would simply heed me."

An ugly sneer twisted Hana's cherubic features. "Heed 'you?' I'm the physical manifestation of supernatural deific energies. If anything, you should be heeding me. And I say, I'm not moving until Kim comes to get me!" She crossed her arms and wriggled, trying to settle deeper into the thin mattress.

Yori forced her clenched, trembling fists to open. "Hana," she began.

"No! I hate you!" Hana screamed.

The last of Yori's patience broke and vanished. She cowed Hana's sneer with a sharp look and a sharper tone. "Fine! Then you may hate me outside of this facility as well, because you are leaving with me. Now be silent!"

With trembling breath, Yori turned back to the door. She began to draw her three sources of power into focus. Her mind, her body, and her spirit came together as one, drawing their collective power down Yori's arm and into her Quivering Palm.

She banished all thought from her mind, focusing it entirely on one of the cell door's rivets. With a single blow, her tripart energies would unite onto that one point, sending a shockwave through the metal that would rend it asunder. Whatever energies she could not direct out of herself would rebound and do the same to her.

For a split second, Yori's mind wandered back to when Ron had attempted the move despite her warnings, and the two weeks she had lost to the coma after absorbing half of the move's backlash. She knew she did not have the control necessary to perfectly direct such force, as Sensei did. But perhaps, if she applied all of her focus, she could shatter the steel door and only break every bone in her arm. At least that would leave her with a remaining arm to carry Hana to safety.

The cell door opened without warning, startling Yori out of her distraction. As she lost control of the energy she had been gathering, her palm shot forward, discharging what she had gathered. Desperately, she tried to aim to one side, and felt her shoulder wrench from its socket as she struck the doorframe. The metal shrieked, splitting away from the wall, bowed and twisted from the fraction of Yori's full attack.

Ron jumped back in surprise at the near miss. "Whoa! Same team!" he cried.

As Yori collapsed to her knees, Hana leapt from the bed and bowled past her. The little girl wrapped herself around Ron's waist and cried, "Wana!"

He caught Hana and hoisted her up into his arms. As he buried his face in her hair, he felt a days-old knot of panic uncurl in his chest. It was hard to fight the tears welling in his eyes as he felt Hana's muffled crying soak his chest.

"Hey there, Intruder," he cooed into her hair. "That's an awful outfit you're wearing. What say we find you some new duds?"

Hana looked down at the small prisoner jumpsuit that had been cut and pinned into the poor fit she now wore. "Uh-huh," she agreed, and wiped her snotty nose.

Hearing a groan, Ron set Hana aside and knelt next to Yori. The young ninja cradled her shoulder and tried to offer Ron a reassuring smile, all without success. "Easy," Ron said, and lifted her hand from the dislocated joint. "Was that move what I think it was?"

Yori grimaced. "I had little option remaining. I heard the guards leaving, and had to capitalize on the opportunity," she said. Then she yelped as Ron drove her shoulder back into place.

"Yeah, they were leaving to chase me," Ron said.

His hand lingered on Yori's shoulder. A warm, red glow trickled out from under his fingers and seeped through Yori's skin. Instantly, Yori's tensed expression slackened. She nodded in gratitude as Ron helped her to her feet. Then she gasped in surprise when Ron pulled her into a tight, long hug. After a second, Yori closed her eyes and gladly returned the gesture, savoring the same relief she could feel in him.

Hana tugged at Ron's dark, taut leggings, drawing apart the reunited ninjas. "Wana, shouldn't we hurry? They could come back any second!"

Ron smirked and folded his arms, puffing out his chest. "No worries, li'l lady. The 'me' they're chasing isn't me-me. They're outside the base right now looking for a dashingly good-looking rogue in a battle suit."

Yori eyed Ron's stealthy bodysuit and backpack. The thin fabric was a far cry from the impossible living metal of the new Team Possible battle suits. "And why would they be doing that?" she asked.

His smirk tripled. "Because right now there's a dashingly good-looking rogue in a battle suit running around outside their base," he said.

* * *

Rocks crumbled beneath the battle suit's hands. The heavy metal material made the climb up the rocky slope all the more difficult, but the half a dozen armed GJ agents behind her gave Monique all the encouragement she needed to reach the top of the ridge.

She huffed, looking back at the agents gaining on her. It was hard enough to breathe with the battle suit binding her chest to look more like Ron's. The fact that Jim and Tim hadn't been able to get it to work for her without an interface chip meant that she was lugging around a clinging dead weight while incredibly fit trained killers chased her around Mount Trinity.

"Ron, if I get out of this," Monique wheezed through the full mask, "I am gonna use this ultra-tux to turn you into a pretzel."

A stray plasma bolt glanced off her shoulder, making her yelp. She felt the heat of the ricochet, and rolled over the edge of the ridge. Her heels skittered down a steep incline, dragging her hindquarters across the rough rock until she struck an outcropping.

Monique scrambled underneath the outcropping. She hammered the side of her helmet, and snarled, "Hey!"

"_Augh!_" one of Kim's brothers yelped in reply. "_What? What is it?_"

"I'm starting to feel the heat out here, Tweeb." Monique grasped at the spot on her shoulder, feeling around for any breach in the armor. "You said these fancy duds were invincible, right?"

"_We're a little busy here, Mon._"

"And I'm getting shot at! Answer the question!"

She could practically feel him cringing from the volume of her shout. "_Yes, already! Even without power, the battle suit is totally invincible…ish._"

Her eyes bugged behind the visor. "Ish? Ish! What the hell does 'ish' mean?"

"_Listen, Monique, I have to go._ _We're busy trying to break about eighteen federal laws—"_

"Which one of you is this?" Monique demanded.

"_…I don't think I wanna say,_" the unknown twin mumbled.

She pounded the rocks. "You don't, huh? Well, I'll tell you which one you are. If I start losing limbs out here because this suit is too 'ish,' you're the one that's gonna give me yours to replace 'em!"

The rock above her exploded with chattering plasma fire. Monique yelped and scrambled backwards, and spied a line of GJ agents cresting the ridge with rifles trained on her. As she pushed back onto her feet and began to run up the next ridge, she pressed the hidden control in the suit's wrist.

"You want me, Goober Justice?" Ron's voice burst out of the suit's faceplate. "You gotta catch me first!"

Monique murmured much more softly, "Please, God, don't let them kill me…"

* * *

"—so as long as the suit stays locked to my body type, and nobody measures how tall Mon is, the Globies should keep chasing her." Ron propped his hands on his hips, smiling. "Pretty clever, right?"

Yori frowned. "What is a 'tweebs?' " she asked.

"Wait," said Hana, interrupting. "You prerecorded everything Monique would say? How could you know what they would say?"

He hoisted his sister up onto his shoulders, steadying her with his hand. "I've been knocking around with Global Justice since I was fifteen. After so many years, you learn to speak Blowhard as a second language."

Hana scowled, and leaned over to look at Ron upside-down. "But why didn't you just have the Tweebs reprogram the suit's external speakers to emulate your voiceprint?"

Ron blinked, and then turned to the door, leading them out into the abandoned corridor. Hana had to duck to avoid the cell doorframe as Ron said, "Next time you can plan the rescue, and I'll lounge in the cell Princess Leia-style. Now let's grab Kim and Rufus and get out of here. Where are they?"

"We do not know. Kim-san was separated from us upon our arrival. I suspect Commander Du wished to interrogate her first," Yori said.

"Right. Let's finish checking the rest of the cells. I really hope we don't have to search the whole base. This place is mad big, and nobody here likes us," said Ron.

He crossed the corridor to the other row of cell doors and held his Kimmunicator watch up to the door's keypad. The watch buzzed against Ron's wrist, and then the keypad beeped. Ron swung the cell door open to reveal a scarred, blue look of gratitude.

"Oh, thank you! Thank you, sidekick!" Drakken exclaimed, falling to his knees. "Regular prison is bad enough, but I'd never survive a secret prison cell. I'm a very social creature!"

Ron balked, turning back to Yori. "Wait a minute," he said, and casually swung the door shut in Drakken's face. "Did you say Commander 'Du?' "

Drakken's muffled screams spilled through the thick door as Yori answered, "I believe so. He seemed quite serious about capturing Kim-san."

"Yeah, I bet," Ron muttered. "Let's work double-time, ladies. Things are so much worse than I thought they were. We need to find Kim and Rufus, like, yesterday."

* * *

Rufus thumped against the spherical energy barrier. He stretched his shape in a hundred different ways, hitting the inside of the sphere from every possible direction. He hit a dozen directions at once, slamming amorphous tendrils every which way. All the while, he chattered, and swore, and hissed at the hooded face outside of his prison.

Phil leaned close to the containment sphere. He rapped his pen on the sphere's solid exterior, and then against the breath mask of his full containment hazard suit. "These Possible cases always give us the neatest stuff," he said. "This thing has trace DNA markers of _Heterocephalus Glaber_, but the rest of its makeup is completely artificial. It's like some kind of bioengineered organic machine that thinks it's a naked mole rat!"

His partner stood at the lab table behind him, turning a petite wristwatch over in his hands. The deceptively ingenious device was reflected in his containment suit's visor. "Hey," Lem said, setting aside the watch, "do you think they meant us when they called for all available personnel?"

"No, Lem," Phil said, returning to the single lab table of their small, purportedly overfunded investigative lab. "The Commander was calling for all combat personnel. You know: brave people."

Lem started to pick up the watch again, and then set it down. "We can be brave too," he insisted.

The monogrammed badge on the table disappeared in Phil's oversized gloves. "Please. We are the only two people in this entire base that failed weapon maintenance certification because of grievous injury."

"True," Lem admitted. "But I hear Agent Crate got the hang of his artificial foot enough to resume training again. Maybe he would give us private lessons this time."

"Look at this. Look at it!" Phil said, and held out the badge for Lem to see. "We have spent the last two years trying to reverse engineer the scans we took from the Generation One Load Battle Suit. Do you know what this is?"

"…a tacky alternative to nametags?" Lem guessed.

"This is Third Generation! It's different than the Gen Two battle suit that little weasel genius debuted less than two months ago. It deploys an adaptive bodysuit made from an alloy I'm not even sure they have a name for yet. It has force fields and exponential physical attribute magnification. It's self-recharging! It recharges itself, Lem!" Phil whined, and tossed the badge onto the lab table.

Lem shook his head. "Wow. That kid just can't stop dreaming up reasons for GJ to fire us, can he?"

"Imagine if we could figure out one of these battle suits," Phil said, and sighed onto his work stool. "Then we wouldn't need weapon maintenance clearance. We wouldn't need anybody."

"We could be brave all on our own," Lem said wistfully. Sobering, he said, "At least, I assume I would be brave, given the ability to throw a car at my enemies."

"We wouldn't need a Tactical division. Science would double as the Tactical division with our mighty technology," Phil said. "No super villain would dare stand against us."

Poking at the badge, Lem added, "We could even solve this Possible dilemma. Beat them with their own tech. Wouldn't that be something?"

They both chuckled awkwardly until a shuffling footstep behind them made them stop. Turning around, they both recoiled at the sight of Kim Possible standing in the open doorway of their lab. The dark bruising around her face made her almost unrecognizable, but her fiery hair and sleeveless prisoner jumpsuit were clue enough.

She walked into the lab slowly, her leg dragging stiffly behind her. One of her bandaged arms was caked in blood from the elbow down. Lem and Phil scrambled backwards as her bloody hand reached out.

"Oh, God, please don't kill us!" Phil's scream trickled through the filters in his mask. He shrank into a fetal ball in the corner of the lab and covered his head.

Lem flattened himself against the equipment cabinets, holding his breath as Kim's shaking hand grew closer. "I have to warn you," he stammered, "if your plan is to torture me, you won't get anything out of me, because they don't trust me with any knowledge of value."

Kim's glittering green eyes passed over both scientists to rest on the lab table. Her bloody grasp closed around the Kimmunicator watch, and then around the battle suit badge.

Then she turned her sights to the containment field in the corner of the lab. Both scientists flinched as she raised her hand again. Seconds later, Lem risked cracking a single eye, and saw Kim pointing at the field. Her finger remained steadfast on the naked mole rat's cage. Her eyes, unfocused, were nevertheless flat and hard.

"Phil," Lem hissed. "Phil, open the containment unit!"

Phil uncoiled himself enough to see Kim's silent demand. His hand trembled like a leaf as it slapped the control panel above his head, searching blindly until he pressed the field's deactivation control. The field flickered out, freeing the pink blob inside.

Rufus chittered gleefully as he _glorped_ onto Kim's outstretched hand. The living pink putty flowed up her arm and congealed himself back into shape on her shoulder. He blew a long, wet raspberry at the two scientists as Kim silently stumped out of the lab.

After several moments, Phil managed to emerge from the cocoon of his arms and legs. He peered out the empty door, and then tapped at his partner. "Lem? Lem?"

Lem jolted at the touch. He collapsed back against the cabinets, and then caught himself on the lab table and half-laid across the now empty workspace. "Oh, my God," he wheezed, "that was…that was…do they have a word for a kind of terror that locks every muscle in your body?"

Phil collapsed against the opposite side of the table. "Do you realize what just happened?" he squeaked.

"We just encountered an Alpha-level threat right here in our own lab," Lem said.

"…and survived," Phil said emphatically.

Realization steeped Lem's steadying voice. "Not only that," he realized, "but we're still conscious."

"That's more than half the Tactical division can say right now!" Phil exclaimed.

Lem met Phil's hooded gaze with what Phil assumed to be a meaningful look. "We are badasses," he said.

"Yes, we are," Phil said proudly. "Now let's hurry and seal the door in case she comes back."

"Agreed," Lem said, and raced ahead of Phil to the door controls.

* * *

Wade sagged in his chair. He scratched his head, careful of the soldering iron still in his hand. "That is one hell of a story," he admitted.

"As much of it as I know, anyway," Sim said. His brow furrowed. He started to speak, and then hesitated. A moment later, he said, "Sometimes I don't think my father or Shego are telling me everything."

"Color me shocked," Wade mumbled. Louder, he said, "You know, you don't strike me as the villainous type."

Sim's frown deepened. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Wade shrugged. Plucking idly at a loose wire in the gutted Memory Ray, he said, "Well, for one thing, you haven't beaten me or pushed me around. In fact, of all the people giving me a hard time this week, you seem almost reasonable."

"No," Sim insisted, "I mean, why would you think I was villainous?"

The sheer earnest confusion in Sim's voice made Wade blink. He cocked his head, and said, "You're kidding me, right? You're working for Professor Dementor. Even if the name didn't imply a baseline malevolence, you have to know his history. Your boss, or dad, or whatever, is one bad dude."

Sim shook his head. "No," he said again. "I know what the rest of the world thinks of him. But you're smarter than that, Wade. You're better than that. You have to see that Father only wants what's best for the world. That's all he's ever wanted."

"…wow." Wade whistled as he tossed aside the soldering iron. He spun back to the worktable, turning his back on Sim, and pushed his attentions back into the Ray. "That little half-witted fireplug has got you wrapped around his finger."

The table rattled as Sim slammed his fist next to the ray gun. Startled, Wade could not move as Sim forcibly spun him on his stool. "That isn't fair!" Sim snapped. "You only know the biased slant of a cruel and capricious world! You've stood against him without truly understanding his work!"

Wade took a deep breath. He had to force himself to remember that the freckled face glaring at him wasn't that of his friend. "Okay, first? Don't talk to me about media bias. I worked all the soft science out of my system when I was seven years old and I consulted on that losing presidential campaign. Never again.

"Second," he said, "if I actually believe anything you say…you're, like, a month old. Do you actually know anything about the achondroplastic megalomaniac with the inferiority complex you call a father?"

"I…" Sim faltered. "Y-You know what memories I have. I remembered you, didn't I? I remember Professor Dementor!"

The teenage fixer snorted. "Uh-huh. See, that's the problem. If you really did have 'those' memories, then we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Sim's mouth flapped soundlessly. He balled up his fist, ready to lash out at Wade, or the bench, or anything in reach. But Wade's flat stare opened his hands. "I remember Dementor," he insisted limply.

Wade grunted. "Sure you do. But that's not the point, is it?" He leaned close, almost pressing his nose to Sim's. His breath made the lookalike tremble. "The real question is: what do you remember about him? Or here's a better one: what do you really know about this plan of his?"

"W-What do you mean?" Sim stammered.

"What do you know about Dementor's plan?" Wade asked again, stretching every word into its own uncomfortable moment. "What are you helping him do?"

Sim stepped back. A shadow fell over him, drawing is gaze upward. He stood in the long shadow of the Entropy Cannon's barrel. When he looked down again, he saw Wade smirking, and felt an icy stab of rage and fear.

"Good guys don't kidnap people. And they sure as hell don't force people to work on doomsday weapons for them," Wade said.

"Shut up," Sim said.

"Why?"

"Shut up!" snarled Sim. "You…you just keep working. No more talking. I have to…have to…"

He backpedaled out of the room, slapping the door lock as he left.

Wade held his smirk until the doors sealed. As soon as the metal leaves touched, he sagged back against the workbench, letting the gutted ray gun clatter to the floor. His racing heart gradually slowed.

"This is why I stay in my room," he muttered. "I am not wired for this half of the hero equation."

He looked around the lab, surveying his options. The glint of a lens in the ceiling's corner assured him that, even with his babysitter gone, Wade still had eyes watching him.

The computer monitor in the wall gave him more bad news. He worked at it for five of his precious private minutes before realizing that Dementor had outthought him before he'd arrived.

"Everything outside of this room is physically disconnected," Wade muttered to the computer, his hand dancing across the touchscreen in the wall. "Which includes the communications equipment. And I'm betting if I try to change a single one or zero in your software, you've got a dozen watchdog programs waiting to let you know."

If he'd had even one of his computers, Wade could have sent out signals to any of the dozens of law enforcement agencies that kept him on a consultation retainer. He could even call Global Justice or, preferably, Kim, and gift-wrap his coordinates for any number of rescuers.

What he had instead was a recycled, repurposed engine of destruction, a smattering of tools, a hobbled computer, and…

Wade looked down at the broken Memory Ray at his feet. Then he looked back at the Cannon. Half a smile worked its way out of his frustration. "Drakken, if I ever see your ugly mug again, I just might have to kiss it," he said, and bent to retrieve his new project.

* * *

Ron's footsteps echoed into the base's hangar. He followed the echo closely, moving as fast as he could with Hana balanced on his shoulders. The distant sound of boots striking metal spurred him onward against the fatigue still burning in his muscles. A handful of hours' sleep had barely nibbled at his exhaustion, but he still had one large, burning, redheaded question that kept him moving forward.

He grinned at the sight of the pair of hover jets parked in the middle of the hangar. "If I know my Global Justice protocol—and I really don't—then these bad boys are both fueled up and rarin' to go. Let's pick the shiniest one and get it ready."

"Very good," Yori said.

Ron looked left to find the ninja at his elbow. It occurred to him when she spoke that he hadn't heard her footsteps echoing alongside his when they had entered the hangar. The twinkle in her eye made him suspect that she had noticed it as well.

"Right. So take Hana and pick the shiny one," Ron said, and reached up for Hana's waist. "Get it revved up. I'm going back for Kim and Rufus."

Hana wrapped her arms around his forehead, clinging to him with all her strength. "No!" she squalled. "I'm not going anywhere with her!"

"Regardless of who goes with whom," Yori said, raising a finger, "you seem to be exaggerating my abilities. I can break into the jet, and clear it, but I sincerely doubt I can decipher its controls. I have never even started a car…"

With a decisive yank, Ron pulled Hana from his shoulders and set her onto the deck. "Hana rewired my Gamestation to adjust the Hubble telescope so she could collect her own data. She can figure out a super-advanced hover jet."

When he tried to give Hana an encouraging nudge, Hana grabbed his hand and held steadfast. "No!" she whined. "I don't—"

Then her eyes flickered, catching movement behind Ron.

"No!" Hana cried again.

Ron scowled, and opened his mouth to argue. A sharp, hard blow against the back of his skull clacked his teeth together as he tumbled forward onto the decking. He sprawled onto his face, his skin squeaking against the metal as he skidded to a stop.

Hana's quickness kept her from being smashed under her brother. It didn't keep her from the arm of Cameron Du, who snatched her off the deck and clutched her against his chest one-handed. His other hand trained a shaking pistol at Yori.

"No," Du told the surprised ninja. "Just no. On the ground, facedown, now." His eyes glittered through blackened bruises, framing the swollen bridge of his nose. Blood stained his lips and chin.

Yori glared at the agent. "How dare you—"

A bolt of plasma flashed past her ear. She felt her hair sway, and clutched reflexively at the motion. The ends of her burnt locks smoldered in her hand where the bolt had chewed through them. With one centimeter's difference, the bolt would have trimmed her ear to the bone.

Du's muzzle shifted slightly, squaring her in his sights. "That was the last of my restraint," he told her.

As Yori lowered herself to the deck, Hana began to kick at the ironclad grasp of Du's arm. Her heels slammed against Du's ribs without effect. "Let me go!" she shrieked. "Let me go!"

He wrenched her to one side, squeezing her until her voice became a squeak. "Be quiet!" he bellowed in her ear.

The sound of wrenching metal struck Du silent, and turned every head in the landing bay. Ron's hands twisted the alloy beneath him as though it were soft clay. He pushed himself onto his feet with one motion, landing on the balls of his feet. His fists hung loosely at his sides, speaking of a casual danger that made the hairs on Du's neck stand at stiff attention.

"Let her go," Ron said.

Without any warning, without a second's hesitation, Du turned his pistol on Ron and fired."

Red fire burst from Ron, engulfing him in a flickering haze. Or rather, to Du's astonished gaze, it appeared to be fire. But when the flames reached out and caught the burning white plasma bolt, Du looked harder, unable to fathom such a force. The rolling flames slowed, revealing their shape to Du. The red haze was a hundredfold simian shapes bound within Ron's aura. It was claws, and tails, and glittering eyes, and shrieking, toothy maws that reached out as if to break free from Ron's body before they snapped back, disappearing into the light once more, only to make room for another ethereal monkey to try in its place.

The shot Du fired hovered in front of Ron's chest, held in the jaws of one of those hundredfold monkeys. As Du watched, the ethereal face bit down hard on the bolt, extinguishing it without a second's effort. Then the jaws split for a single shriek that dissolved into the frenzied crescendo of dozens of monkeys' howls.

"Put her down," Ron said again. His voice pierced the dissonance that howled around him without effort. "Now."

Hana fell limp in Du's grasp. Fear spread in her eyes, and trembled in her lips. "R-Ron?" she whispered.

Du fired again, and again. This time Ron raised his hand to the attack, grasping and smothering each bolt as quickly as Du could pull the trigger. When Du's gun clicked empty, Ron opened his hand. The symbol of the Monkey King flared in the teen's palm.

The light drew Yori's face up from the floor. She saw Ron burning within the red blaze of howling, clawing monkeys. Tears filled her eyes. "Oh, Ron-kun…" she moaned.

Desperate, Du flung Hana aside and dropped the power cell from his pistol. He slammed a new cell into the butt of his weapon. When he raised it again, Ron had already crossed the half-dozen steps between them, and wrapped his glowing hand around the spymaster's throat. The world around Du blurred, and then slammed back into focus as he felt the wall shudder behind him.

Ron lifted the taller, heavier man up the wall without any sign of effort. His dark eyes burned at Du as he spoke calmly. "You should have quit while you were ahead," Ron sneered. "That little stunt pushed you from 'funny' to 'annoying.' Guess who just lost breathing privileges?"

Du pounded against the grasp at his throat. It was like trying to break steel. He tried to speak, but the grasp tightened like a vice, closing his windpipe. It tightened further still, straining sinew and bone. He felt the enormous pressure threaten to pop his skull. All the while, the aura surrounding Ron tore and bit and scratched at Du, shredding the front of his uniform. Thin lines of blood welled all across his skin.

The hellish light glimmered in Hana's tears. She clasped her hands over her mouth to stifle her cry. Staggering forward, she reached out toward the flickering aura that had engulfed her brother. "Ron!" she sobbed. "Ron, stop!"

Clever hands snatched her off the deck to hold her back from the aura's edge. "You must not touch him," Yori whispered into Hana's ear, and carried her backwards.

Ron didn't hear his sister's cries. He glared at Du, relishing the sensation of soft flesh beneath his fingers. With one gesture, he would end their Global Justice problem. This pompous little dictator would serve as a warning to the rest of his tin soldiers. This man, this pathetic nothing, had made Ron flee for days, and now choked and thrashed in Ron's hand. The very idea seemed ridiculous. It seemed hilarious!

He threw back his head and shook with a long, hooting laugh as he prepared to snuff Cameron Du's life.

A solid right cross slammed into the side of Ron's face, knocking his laughter to one side. His mouth snapped shut as he looked toward the source of the punch, glaring. Rage smoldered in his eyes, ready to strike down whatever fool deigned to attack him.

Kim Possible glared back at him from behind a mask of bruises. She drew her fist back to punch him again. The thick gauze bandaging her arm had been shredded by Ron's aura, revealing angry burns with new, thin, oozing cuts.

Ron snarled and jumped back, dragging his knuckles through the floor. His former quarry fell in a heap, blissfully unconscious. An inhuman howl split the air as he reared up, his hands twisted like claws, readied to counter whatever Kim could bring against him. The aura around him exploded into a fevered storm, the ghostly shapes within joining his howl with theirs.

She didn't waver. Her stance never changed in the face of such supernatural frenzy. She just fixed him with that same hard, cold stare.

The rage gripping Ron's features vanished in a single instant. The red storm around him evaporated, leaving no trace but the circle of deep claw marks left in the decking around him. "Kim?" he asked, dazed for half a second. Then his daze gave way to shock and alarm. "Kim!" he cried, and rushed forward.

Still glaring, Kim teetered forward, toppling off her feet. Only Ron's desperate grab kept her upright. Her sudden weight staggered him, so that her chin fell across his shoulder. Her arms dropped to her sides, swaying as Ron wrapped himself around her.

"KP," he murmured. The state of her nearly sent him into a panic. "What the hell happened to you? Are you okay?"

The barest thread of a whisper tickled Ron's ear. "I found you…" Kim said.

As Ron reeled with Kim in his arms, he felt something tug on his black legging. He looked down, and saw Rufus emerging from the pocket of Kim's jumpsuit. The mole rat jabbered at him, and then stretched and slithered up Ron's side to climb onto Ron's shoulder.

"Rufus?" Ron closed an eye as Rufus hugged his cheek. "Buddy, am I ever glad to see you!" He felt a great swell of relief at the tiny, plasticized rodent's embrace. Shifting, he wrapped an arm around Kim's hip and ducked under her arm. "Okay," he grunted, "now we just need—"

A pinprick of light appeared in the far wall of the hangar, cutting Ron short. He watched the light spread through the alloy to become a long, glowing oval. The light intensified, forcing his arm across his eyes as the world vanished into a blinding haze, and then faded just as quickly.

Blinking at the spots in his vision, Ron looked again. There was a hole in the metal bulkhead the size of a two-car garage door. The smooth edges glowed faintly with heat as Jim and Tim stepped through.

"See?" Jim said, pocketing a device. "Like a charm."

Tim grinned. "And we didn't lose our eyebrows this time. Progress," he quipped. Then, looking across the bay, his bravado dissolved. "Kim!" he cried.

Ron struggled forward to meet the twins charging across the hangar. His gaze pointedly avoided the shredded mess of a GJ commander left slumped against the wall. "Front and center, Scarface-Squared. I need someone who knows how to fly a supersonic jet."

A jabbering voice filled Ron's ear as Rufus thumped his shoulder.

"Preferably someone who can reach more than two buttons at a time," Ron amended, and shot the mole rat an annoyed look.

"Right!" Jim said, changing directions. "We just have to find the—"

He stopped suddenly, doubling over against some invisible barrier with a metallic _whud_. Breathless, he half-lay in the air.

Tim pulled a key and fob from his pocket and pressed the fob's button. The Sloth materialized under Jim, honking obediently. "—car," Tim finished for his twin, who slid off the hood, groaning.

"Get it on the cargo lift," Ron said. Then, remembering something, he added, "Mission accomplished?"

Jim got to his feet with a new grin. He gave a thumbs-up, and said, "So accomplished!"

Nodding in relief, Ron cast a look about the expansive room. "Good. The less trouble we have following us, the—"

He stopped cold as his look drifted across the hangar's upper catwalk. A black GJ jumpsuit leaned against the railing, watching him intently. He froze, bracing himself for an attack, or some alarm. But as seconds passed, nothing happened.

Then he recognized the figure. "Doctor Director," he said.

The woman made no reply.

They stood locked in a silent contest, neither willing to break from the other's gaze. They might have stood there forever, except for Yori's intervention. "Ron-san," she whispered, suddenly behind him. "Please, we must not linger."

Her soft plea jolted Ron from his scowl. He looked around, a small swell of panic growing in his chest again until he spotted Hana being helped into the Sloth's passenger seat by Jim. Then he felt Kim sag harder against his side, and nodded. "Right," he said. "C'mon."

But as he and Yori half-carried Kim to the lowering ramp of the hover jet, Ron's eyes trailed back up to the catwalk. Doctor Director still watched them without motion or expression.

Memories rushed back to Ron. He remembered the Director standing silently by when Du had shot Monique. He remembered her silence when Du had forced them into Wade's house. Her silence now made him tremble with rage.

"Try something," he said, meeting her eye with a flat glare. "I dare you."

The whine of engines spurred the teens onto the lowered cargo platform of the hover jet. With the parked Sloth, there was barely enough room for them to stand at the platform's edge. Then the whine became a shriek as the jet's VTOL thrusters stirred the air into a maelstrom. The platform lurched beneath them, forcing Ron to grab the lowered platform's pneumatic struts or be tossed from the jet with Kim in tow.

Tim's voice blared over the ship's loudspeaker, fighting to be heard above the engines. "_Sorry about that,_" he shouted. "_Just trying to get a feel for her. Any sign of Monique?_"

"I don't…there!" Jim shouted, and pointed.

As the hover jet swung about, the hangar doors began to retract. Monique stood at the parting metal curtain. Still clad in the ill-fitted battle suit, she waved her arms in panic. White-hot bolts of plasma began to bracket her, making her duck and flinch.

Jim threw himself onto the thin sliver of platform next to the Sloth. As the jet drifted forward, he lowered his arm over the edge. The engine backwash forced his eyes into slits as he watched Monique reach for him. "Jump!" he screamed.

"This is a shit plan!" Monique screamed back, her voice made hollow by the visor. She gathered herself up, trying to ignore the spraying fire of the GJ agents from the ridge above, and hurled herself into the air.

Straining, Jim's hand closed around her wrist. She grabbed at his wrist in kind, nearly breaking the joint in a death-grip. "Ha!" he cried.

The sudden weight yanked him off the platform. His cry became a short scream as he slid over the harsh metal edge.

Even before he could cry out, Ron felt a cannon blow against his shoulder, and saw Rufus shoot forward with unthinkable speed. A faint red glow lingered in the mole rat's wake. Rufus struck Jim's disappearing ankle and molded himself to fit the teen's foot. Then, in half an instant, he stretched the rest of his mass to wrap and knot himself around the platform's strut. The amorphous rat stretched, but held. His bungeed mouth split open for a tiny scream.

"Ah! Don't let go! Don't let go!" Jim shrieked, even himself unsure whether he meant it for Monique or for whoever stopped his fall.

Monique swung like a pendulum, buffeted by the jet's engines. "I hate these planes!" she screamed. "Hate! Them!"

Yori moved almost as quickly as Rufus, vaulting the hood of the Sloth despite the rocking motion of the aircraft. She flipped and dropped, hooking her feet into the undercarriage of the car as she swung backwards over the edge of the platform. Her hand wrapped into the back of Jim's pants, and she began to pull him straight up, her corded muscles straining against the weight of the two teens.

"I am so glad I remembered the belt today," Jim said, his laughter manic as Yori dragged his hips onto the platform. As soon as he was up, Rufus uncoiled from his foot and collapsed shapelessly against the Sloth's tire.

Together, the two of them lifted Monique up to join them. Monique pressed herself against the side of the Sloth as though she would never leave it. Her too-wide shoulders rose and fell with the deep, terrified gulps of air whistling through her breather mask.

Jim dove over the Sloth and jabbed the platform's controls. Shuddering, the cargo lift began to climb back into the jet's fuselage, forcing everyone aboard the platform to mimic Monique, and hug the car to avoid being scissored by the jet's bulkhead.

The instant the platform clamped into place, the roar of the engines died down to a miniscule squall. Jim shouted into the control's speaker, "We're clear! Punch it!"

Their stolen jet needed little encouragement, and bowled them off their feet in a sudden fit of acceleration. Ron landed sandwiched between Kim's listless form and the pointed corner of a small GJ crate. By the time the stars of pain faded from his eyes, the jet's thrashing had settled into a light, steady turbulence.

"_We're clear,_" Tim reported. "_Middleton's in our six, and I'm not being shy about the throttle. Hicka bicka boo?"_

Jim turned back to the cargo hold. "Anybody dead?"

There was a chorus of noes, and a belabored peep from Monique.

"Hoo-sha," he commed to Tim.

"_Roger. We are…_" There was a click. "_—running dark. Now somebody tell me where I'm going._"

"On my way up," Jim answered, and clicked the controls. He looked to the older teens, who were just now struggling to their feet. "So, um, where exactly are we going?"

Ron lifted Kim back to his side. Her persistent quiet was beginning to worry him. "How long can this thing stay in the air?"

"With a full tank?" Jim did the calculations in his head. "Thirty-six hours, minus combat time."

"Then keep us in the air and far away from anybody who has a beef with us," Ron said.

Jim shook his head and slapped the hatch control. "Sure," he grumbled, and stepped into the next compartment. "Plenty of friendly airspace in the world, right?"

Ron glanced to Yori, who was helping the still suited Monique. "You girls mind keeping the Tweebs company topside? I, uh…"

It was impossible to miss the worried glances Ron cast at Kim. Yori smiled wanly, and nodded. "Of course," she said. Then she sobered, and added, "But we have much we still need to discuss, Ron-san."

Her dark look lingered even after she had left the cargo hold. Ron shivered, not just at her tone, but at the memory of what she undoubtedly wanted to discuss.

Monique slapped his shoulder before he could disappear into reverie. He looked up and saw his own face reflected in the battle suit visor. "Hey," she snapped.

"Right. Sorry, Mon." Ron touched his initials on the suit's breast.

The slick black material slithered back into the badge, which Monique pulled from her shirt. She drew a long, clear breath, closing her eyes. Then she handed the badge to Ron, and held it in his grasp for an extra second. "You have no idea how much you owe me," she said. "Swear to God, that is the last time I get shot at to save your ass. I don't care how cute it is."

"My ass and I are grateful," he assured Monique.

Her face softened as she looked to Kim. She bent a little, trying to meet Kim's eyes, but they were hidden behind a curtain of red hair. "Make sure she's okay," Monique told him. She backed out of the compartment, visibly reluctant to leave them. "And make sure you're okay too."

"Look who's talking," Ron joked. Then, more softly, he said, "Thanks, Mon."

As the hatch closed behind Monique, Ron turned back to Kim. When he lifted her hair, he expected her to be unconscious, given how heavily she hung in his grasp. But her glittering green eyes stared back at him in perfect focus. She watched him in silence, as if waiting.

Jabbering at his feet drew Ron's attention downward. "Hey, buddy," he said to Rufus, who sat on the tip of his boot. "That was a nice snag with Jim. Think you can get the door for me?"

Rufus nodded, and stretched. While clearly exhausted, the mole rat managed to unlatch the car door. He grabbed hold of Ron's suit as the car door swung open, and climbed into a pouch on Ron's belt. Ron guessed Rufus would be asleep before he could even button the pouch again.

Gently, Ron eased Kim onto the car seat, sitting her in place. He'd barely gotten her settled before a cannonball struck him in the back and wrapped her little arms around him.

"Wana!" Hana sobbed, pressing her face into his neck. She had climbed the front seat of the Sloth to cling to his back, practically pressing him face-first into Kim in the tiny car. "Don't ever, ever, ever leave me again! Ever!" she said.

Ron caught her and set her on the seat next to Kim. He mustered a smile to ease the tears streaming down her face. "I'm not going anywhere without my girls again," he said, and meant it fiercely. "Now, give me a second."

He checked Kim's mottled face, and the burns along her arms. He felt at her ribs and watched her wince quietly. With each new injury, the smile on his face lessened, until he was close to tears himself. The ribbon cuts in her fist were the freshest wounds, and made Ron's stomach lurch.

"Kim," he murmured, brushing the hair from her puffy, blackened eyes, "what happened?"

Her lips parted, and a hoarse ghost of her voice emerged. "I had to find you you," she said. "So I did."

The words came so matter-of-factly that they made Ron's eyes burn with tears. He looked away, refusing to let her see him cry. After a few deep breaths, he steeled himself, and met her gaze again. His hands rose to take the sides of her face with a gentle touch.

"You sure did," he said. "Now, hold still."

A red glow filled his hands. As the light began to seep into Kim's skin, Ron heard a tiny squeak beside him. Hana sat frozen, watching uncertainly as the magic began to take hold of Kim's injuries.

"It's okay, Hana," he murmured, and concentrated.

The magic rewrote Kim's body, erasing the nasty echoes of her adventures. Her cuts knit together into lines of dried blood. The burns faded beneath their bandages, becoming pink, healthy skin. Slowly, the bruising that covered Kim's face shrank back into the beautiful, familiar features Ron had been waiting to see for days.

As Ron's hands dropped, their power dimming, the corner of Kim's mouth lifted. "I found you," she said again.

"It's okay, KP," Ron said, and took her hands in his. "I'm here. It's okay."

"I found you." She mouthed the words, her voice but a breath. The focus drifted out of her eyes. Her eyelids grew heavy as her chin began to drop. "I found you."

"KP? Hey," Ron said, dipping to stay in her eye line. "Hey!"

Kim's head lolled to one side, her eyes closed. The lines of her face hung slackened. Ron had to catch her by the shoulders to keep her upright as her body slumped. He held his breath, too terrified to think of what to do. Had his magic been too late?

Then she began to snore.

The soft wheezing was a beautiful song in Ron's ears. He bit his lip to keep from laughing with relief, and rested his forehead against Kim's, luxuriating in the sound of her slumber.

"Is she okay?" Hana whispered.

Ron slid onto the seat between Kim and Hana, and gathered them both close. Hana clung to his arm, while Kim molded herself bonelessly to his side. "We're definitely okay, Intruder," he said.

In minutes, Hana followed Kim into slumber. Ron rested his head back against the seat and listened to them breathing in peace. The steady sound began to lull the adrenaline out of his system, drawing his heavy eyelids closed.

There were still too many problems for Ron to count. Wade's rescue sat at the top of the list, and carried with it precious few clues. The incident in the GJ hangar still worried him, just as he knew it worried Yori. Her death threat, almost forgotten after three days' time, rushed back into focus to hang over his head like the looming blade of a guillotine. And if Yori deigned to spare him, they still had to worry about the international intelligence agency calling for their blood, and the super villains whose plot they still had yet to unravel.

But for now, Ron could content himself with a long, well earned nap in the backseat of a car with the two most important people in his world.

* * *

**To Be Continued **


End file.
